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THOUGHTS: 



BY 



BRUTUS" 

(ROBERT L. HOKE) 



" Of a truth men are mystically united ; 
A mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one." 

— Carlylb, 



MARSHALL & BRUCE CO. 

Nashville, Tenn. 

1902 



I CON'JttESb, 

I'T fU CCieii^ RtCUIxEO 

I wrv, 7;; fQO'v 

I noDVOIOHT FNTHV 



DeDtcatton. 






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To my sister, Mrs. Lillian Randolph Hoke, whose 
confidence in my abilities, and whose encourage- 
ment in times of great despondency, have inspired 
my best efforts in writing. 



Copyrighted by 
Lillian Randolph Hoke 
1902 



3Jntrofiuction. 



IT was hoped that this volume could be published before 
the death of Mr. Hoke, so that he might have the grati- 
fication of seeing placed in a more permanent form some of 
his writings that had appeared from time to time in the 
daily press. When he was contributing to the columns of 
the Nashville Banner the articles which appeared under the 
general title of "Here and There," he was frequently re- 
quested to compile them into a book, but so modest was his 
estimate of the literary worth of his productions, he did not 
seriously entertain the proposition. He felt that he had not 
attained to the standard of excellence it was his ambition 
to achieve, and he preferred to bide the time when he could 
essay a work that, in his judgment, would more nearly ap- 
proach the ideals in thought and expression which he ever 
kept before him, and which he could not approximate to his 
own satisfaction under circumstances that rendered much 
of his labor of a desultory character. But the encroachment 
of an inherited disease, which had shadowed his life, grad- 
ually shut out the prospect of the attainment of his larger 
desires, and as he lay helpless on a bed of pain, and hopeless 
of recovery, he yielded to importunity and consented to the 
publication of a collection of his essays, which, appearing in 
the newspaper prints, had elicited so many and such hearty 
expressions of appreciation. Although weak and wasted, he 
indicated the choice of most of the essays appearing in this 
volume. It is deeply regretted that he did not live to take 
in his hands a book, the publication of which, under the cir- 
cumstances, is a tribute by his friends to his nobility of 
character and the admirable work of his pen. 

G. H. Baskette. 



mutt to Content?* 



Page 

A Bird Sketch 225 

A Case for Pity 272 

A Case of Bught 218 

A Cure for the Blues 187 

A Day in the Country 85 

A Letter's story 214 

A Man of the Wori^d 208 

Amiabii^ity 202 

Among the Dead Letters 128 

Ancestry and Marriage 289 

An Enchanted Calendar 77 

An Incident 292 

An Incident of THE Street 41 

An Unpublished Tribute 193 

A Plea for the Living 257 

Are Batchelors of Worth? 90 

A Reporter's Story 275 

Art and the Drama.. 170 

A Singer of the Past.. 222 

As to Genius 140 

A Tame Butterfly 31 

Autumn Days 299 

A Womanless Funeral 26 

Beyond THE Twilight 200 

Bow TO THE Summer Girl 212 

Chivalry and the Times 205 

Circumstances and Character. 40 

Coming Brotherhood, The - 177 

Consideration 287 

Contentment of Great Minds 113 

Cynicism AND Personality 50 

Degeneracy of Dress 191 

Destiny OF Man 291 

Does Gratitude Engender Love? 263 

Driftwood 284 

Each Man His Model. 6 

iv 



Index to Contents. v 

Page 

Feminine Amiability. .._ 69 

Feminine Dress 179 

Fidelity of the Dog 35 

Fixed Purpose 252 

Force of Character 55 

Fourscore Years 83 

Genius and Matrimony 135 

Genius and Wealth 99 

Gentleman in Literature 46 

Home Life and Happiness 142 

Humanity and Hash 282 

Human Quality of Verdi's Music 116 

Humor 277 

Hypocrisy AND Sentiment 269 

Incompetent Reading 231 

Insincerity 33 

Is Ugliness a Bar to Love? 92 

John Ruskin 102 

Love and Fortitude - - 368 

Love and Poetry 160 

Man and His Neighbor 243 

Man's Neglect... 22 

Marriage 172 

Men and Women 215 

Modern Morality 302 

Music Void and Vital 28 

Nature and Cure of Melancholy 79 

October Days 318 

Perverted Uses OF Superior Gifts 249 

Phases of a Woman 59 

Phases OF Simplicity... 19 

Popularity 306 

Robert G. Ingersoll 236 

Scholars And Thinkers 124 

Self-Importance 171 

Shakespeare's Reverence 174 

Sin AND Song 189 

Social Abuses... 145 

Some Old Recipes 57 

Some Passing Music 163 

Spring 166 



vi Index to Contents. 

Paok 

Stage Sympathies 273 

The Beauty of Simpwcity 48 

The Cheerfui, Spirit 9 

The Ci^osiNG Year... 148 

The Coming Brotherhood. 219 

The Drama of the Beautifui* 105 

The Evolution OF the Reporter 195 

The EXUI.TATION OF Music 185 

The Fall of Idols.. 295 

The Family Burying Ground... 66 

The Goodness of the World 107 

The Larger Charity. 110 

The Literature of the Past _ 43 

The Nobility of Friendship 4 

The Passing of Old Ideals 157 

The Potter's Field. 37 

The Poverty of Wealth 228 

The Query OF A Little Girl 233 

The Rapture of Summer. 13 

The Silent Side 53 

The Sin of Omission 63 

The Spirit of Reverence 119 

The Struggle Against Hypocrisy 255 

The Study of Womankind 181 

The Theater in Morals 247 

The Value OF Good Intentions 121 

The Value of Gregariousness 279 

The Value of Personal Worth 87 

The Way of Love 73 

The Wisdom of Winter 152 

Through Misanthropic Eyes. 132 

Truth of Character. 15 

Two Dawns 75 

Two Evils That Thkive 198 

Two Tidal Waves 266 

Value of Style in Writing 96 

VoicESOF Nature l 

Wealth's View of Wealth 260 

Woman AND Publicity 168 

Woman's Happiness 298 



^xttatt. 



T F the author of the present series of essays is overbold 
in offering the volume to a wider circle of readers than 
the writings originally enjoyed through the medium of 
newspaper circulation, he lodges for excuse the kindly 
favor of indulgent readers among the community in which 
they have chiefly circulated. 

The essays are the outcroppings of reflective moods of 
thought on divers phases of life that appear not to have 
received the attention of writers eminent in the field of 
philosophical study, but which, nevertheless, appear to this 
writer to be interesting integrals in the sum of present in- 
tellectual and social conditions. 

It will be seen that the essays concern themselves chiefly 
with those phases of current life that appeal to sentiment 
and reflection. The general purpose that directed them was 
to suggest, through succinct outlines, certain reflections 
and lines of thought tO' be taken up rather as texts for the 
reader's further thought, than as complete expositions of the 
themes addressed. 

The author is conscious of abruptness in several subjects, 
but he is hopeful that the reader, instead of being dis- 



viii PREFACE. 

pleased with the lack of elaboration, may find the subjects 
sufficiently suggestive to induce a pursuance of the theme 
into larger and better conclusions than the writings them- 
selves contain. 

Finally, the author cherishes the hope that the essays 
manifest an earnest sympathy in the welfare of men and 
women in general, and the further hope that the views and 
sentiments expressed may be deemed worthy of the in- 
creasing catholicity of thought which is carrying forward 
the accomplishment of the common brotherhood of man. 




THOUGHTS: By Brutus 



l^oice^ of Jl5ature. 

THIS closing period of autumn should not be classed 
among the melancholy days. Who does not feel serenity 
of mind and heart to leave the smoky town, with its im- 
peded sky, the jostling, busy crowd, arrayed in overcoats 
and furs, as sable as the poet's picture of the season, and 
drive into the sun-lit woods, where not a mist hangs in the 
blue, nor heat nor cold discomforts one — where the spirit 
of solitude gathers the willing senses into its vast repose, 
its calm, uplifting contemplation. 

The dull monotony of green has gone from slope and 
field; the far hills stretch like a golden crescent, and wind- 
ing roads show still and white like thoroughfares prepared 
for the occasion. 

On the limbs of denuded trees birds pause for flight like 
reluctant camp-followers bidden to go hence — not a cheer- 
less flight, else they would not sing so happy of their de- 
parture. 

The wind blows, not as a destroyer, but with gentle care, 
as of one who would shelter his flocks in comfortable 
retirement from the freezing blasts to come. The noiseless 
disarray is not depressing, for over all there hangs an 
air that speaks of restoration and return. 



2 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

ITius reassured by nature's self that decay is not a prop- 
erty of hers, one returns refreshed from the communion. 

Or, if still another fear, half dread, half hope, lingers 
within us, lest decay may have touched forever in another 
and a dearer spot than in the wild woods — the spot where 
sleep those whom we can never cease to love, let us drive 
thither unafraid, for doubt, though it may attend us on the 
way, will remain behind if we but rightly comprehend the 
voiceless teachings of that solemn place. 

Indeed, to stay too much away from the departed is to 
be disconsolate; to visit and be near them, comfort — not in 
the first unmitigable grief, perhaps, but in the aftertime, 
when bitterness has ceased and hope's persistency resumes 
and yearns for evidence. 

We shall not find that evidence demanded by the cold 
materialist. Nor yet should we persuade ourselves of resur- 
rection, for death is not a mockery, nor otherwise than as it 
seems, so far as our bodies are concerned. 

If it is all-important to our faith to believe that dead lips 
shall be kissed again, or those closed eyes unveil in rapture 
on our sight beyond the tomb, or the mute voice whisper 
words of love once more, or the cold arms enfold us as of 
old, we shall not be comforted. 

But if the immortal part of us is of a finer structure than 
the muddy vesture of decay, that doth grossly close it in, 
why, then, let the heart not despair; let grief be still. In- 
stead of anguish, let faith be perfect and elate. 

Love is not love that weakly falters when the body dies. 
Its spirit and its essence lie not in material things, but in 
the substance of feeling and of thought, and of a close 
communion and dependence not definable in words. 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 3 

Even in our earthly lives neither circumstances, nor dis- 
tance, nor in any of the vicissitudes of being, serve to restrict 
it in any wise. 

Man's love is his proportion of the divine; his being is 
his proportion of eternity. 

It is hard to part where no light is visible beyond the 
separation, and, therefore, when our endearments are sun- 
dered, doubt rushes in to fill the vacuum; but there is a 
clear eye in man that does not fail him in the darkness of 
the tomb, any more than his physical condition deserts him 
in the nights of earth. 

That larger vision sees order in the universe. Order is 
not the child of chance. It is established, and could not 
proceed otherwise than from intelligence — and that intelli- 
gence is God. 

God's purposes must be as everlasting as Himself, other- 
wise he would be a trifler, a jester, a scorner of His own 
handiwork, a being intolerable to his own creatures. 

The majesty of the creation, the fineness of the handi- 
work, and the prevalence of perpetual laws in nature forbid 
utterly the idea of limitation. 

Hear the winds wail through the naked trees of the ceme- 
tery, as though aggrieved that frost had swept them of 
their leaves! How it gathers the blasted foliage on its sus- 
taining wings and heaps them in the hollow of the woods, 
jusi as men bury their dead! Yet the trees themselves still 
stand in pride, assured from their own sap that they shall 
be green with leaves again. And the vast variety of colors 
which the frost visits on them ere they die — what is the 
significance of all those hues, only to attest that decay is 
not hideous, but beautiful even in so trifling a thing as an 
autumn leaf. 



4 - THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

Do those colors fade and cease forever? They do not 
cease at all; beauty is imperishable. So it must be with the 
immortal part of us. 

Then who shall be afraid to stand above the best-loved 
grave and say: "Here lies the body that was dear to me, 
but there is an immortal part absent from this decay. Here 
are my memories, but not my hopes. Only the past is 
here; the finer part has gone into the illimitable future. 
Therefore, I turn from this disorder, comforted in mind that 
for mankind the tomb cannot be final." 



Ci)e j^oftilitp of JFtienD$|)ip, 

SHAKESPEARE ran riot with language. He was the 
sovereign of intensity. Into his sculptured semblance 
of men he breathed the very breath of life. 

Cold, insensate chroniclers of the dramatist's life record 
vacuity as the only discernible quantity of Shakespeare, the 
man. They represent his individuality as inscrutable. It is 
no such thing. Of all men in the tides of time, he is the 
most scrutable. Even to the visibility of our actual eyes 
he could not walk the earth incognito. 

In not one character, no matter how trivial and acces- 
sory, does Shakespeare the individual subvert Shakespeare 
the dramatist. He was loyal to his creatures, and never 
once blemished them by infidelity. Yet he could no more 
avoid infusing himself into the world of his creation than 
the Deity escaped infusion into mankind. He made a mar- 
vel of Foldnius — an eccentric, ambiguous, and spectacular 
person, half fool and half sage. His injunctions to Laertes 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 5 

were as the advice of an embittered man to the one creature 
of his affection. He didn't guess at the world, but he knew 
and despised it, and cautioned his son to use dissimilation 
and reserve to their utmost propriety, in order that he might 
be the duper rather than the duped. 

Still there was one element in man that he, as a royal 
functionary and statist, missed, only to desire it the more 
intensely for his son. Therefore, Shakespeare lent to this 
assertive servitor, in the moment of his gravest anxiety, his 
own superb comprehension of the value and rarity of friend- 
ship. 

So from the lips of that old lump of arrogance there 
came these words: 

"The friends thou hast and their adoption tried, grapple 
them to thy soul with hooks of steel." 

A marvelous utterance! It brings before us Gibraltar 
and the sea — strength, stability, reserve force, impregna- 
bility. It is like the line of the equator. It spans the horo- 
scope of life like a rainbow. It is manhood in search of 
man. 

It leaves nothing to be said and forbids expatiation. 

It is like the voice of a god ennobling mankind. 

And that expression, "grapple them to thy soul with 
hooks of steel!" It is the most masculine phraseology that 
ever came from the human mind. 

The man who knows the adoption of his friends, and 
grapples them to his soul with hooks of steel, will never 
go to hell. And if he did, celestial creatures would call him 
back or follow him. 

Friendship is above all dignities. Only the noble know 
it. Love is the essence of selfishness. It is the essential 



6 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

desire to possess and to enjoy. Its fineness is its capacity 
to suffer and to endure the torture of sacrifice. Friendship 
is incapable of pain, and sacrifice is a word that escapes 
its comprehension. 

But for friendship, integrity would, not exist upon the 
earth; there would be no striving after excellence, no en- 
durance, no fortitude. 

Character would disappear from among mankind if 
friendship were to expire in the human breast. It is the 
river of encouragement to our deeds, and the ocean of con- 
solation to our distress. If it cannot infuse purpose, it can 
at least dispel despair. 



OBacl) Qian ^10 opoDeL 

IF human vanity were to be defined in its broadest reach 
and its superlative degree, it would be found in the 
audacious license which man exercises in judging men. 

"Judge not, lest ye be judged," is one of the wisest admo- 
nitions ever addressed to the mind. And yet it is the least 
observed of wisdom's injunctions. From idiot to sage, men 
yield more conversation in opinions about other men than 
in all the other talk that goes on. Only the word "opinions" 
is too magisterial a term with which to express this imper- 
tinence. 

No matter who the talker, whatever estimate he places 
on another man, whether in judgment of his next door 
neighbor, or the President; whether of a butcher, an artist, 
or a soldier — that judgment is as much an ipse dixit as 
an encyclical from the Pope, or a declaration by Napoleon. 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 7 

What man ever doubts that he knows what he is talking 
about? To perdition with opinions opposing- his. 

One man hkes a certain thing; a second disUkes it, and 
hkes something that the first man dishkes. The conse- 
quence is that they view each other with askance, if not 
with disdain. Different in habits, the customs of the one 
are ever incomprehensible to the other. 

I heard two partners talking. "I guess I'll go down and 
see the ball game this afternoon," said one. 

"Why do you waste time on a stupid thing like ball; go 
somewhere where you can enjoy yourself." 

"Haven't you got seats for the opera to-night? Well, 
that sort of thing don't suit my understanding, so let's both 
be stupid each to his taste." 

The sea is a depressing monotony to one man. It is an 
inspiration and multifold delight to others. One man to 
the mountains, another to the billows; others yet to quiet 
country houses, and some to caves to dwell in the mysteries 
of the under world. 

Men cross the sea to live in foreign lands, and on the 
selfsame waves other ships pass, bound hitherward, with 
souls that seek a habitation whence these depart. Are 
some of these contrary seafarers wise and some foolish in 
their conflicting course, or shall reserved judgment bid 
both godspeed? 

Whether under the constraints of circumstances, or the 
inclinations of temperament, men should be left free, in 
their pursuit, from the babble of people whose affairs are 
no better managed and whose tastes are none the less 
eccentric. 

What is eccentricitv? Which has it — vou or I, or the 



8 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

third man? Women are just as culpable of this general folly 
of criticizing everybody else as men are. Two were walk- 
ing ahead of me recently, when they passed a third. 

"I think it is perfectly shameful that a woman should 
dress for display on the streets," said one of the two, so the 
well-dressed woman would hear and feel hurt. The woman 
speaking had been so lavish in applying perfume to her 
raiment that passers, sniffing it, looked back in surprise 
that her maid should have been so^ unmindful in not in- 
structing her mistress to be charier of her cologne. 

Carping women seem to flatter themselves that they 
enjoy a unique and delightful little monopoly in making 
pungent, vitriolic flings at their sister women, but they 
deceive themselves. No woman ever cast a slur or heaped 
ridicule but that she herself has been slurred and ridiculed. 

It is like the ancient law of retaliation — an eye for an eye, 
a tooth for a tooth. And many a woman has laughed in 
silly glee about another, when she herself was being 
laughed about iust as silly. 

If only the vanities of life had sway, what a mockery 
social life would be! Of all tedious, intolerable women, 
who so stupid, vain, and unendurable as she who has 
known nothing but sunshine. 

The heart parches where there is no shade, no shadow 
in a life, no tears to moisten and refresh, like the sustaining 
dew. Sorrow becomes a woman. She cannot be complete 
without it. 

Not that which embitters and casts utterly down, but 
that sorrow which reflects, as a mirror of the soul, the vast 
woes of the world so gently, so softly, that she is drawn 
into the little Eden of Faith, and Hope, and Charity, where 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 9 

grief and sympathy meet and, like inseparable sisters, re- 
deem each other into the cheerfulness and good of life. 

It is not the man intelligently acquainted with the world 
who passes quick judgment on his fellows, and exalts his 
conduct and his wisdom as criterions for the universal 
earth to emulate. Rather it is the shallow man, who re- 
ceives no impressions from his own presumption. 

Neither is it the woman of genuine worth who holds 
herself to be her sex's paragon. 

Fewer inventories of our neighbor's stock in trade and 
more care in keeping our own up to a better standard would 
furnish a lubricant to the sluggish old fly-wheel of civiliza- 
tion, that might quicken its motion somewhat. 

There are three qualities in the world that women crave 
and admire — they are constancy, affection, and sense. The 
dog has these. Consequently let him be hailed as the 
prince and ruler of feminine pets. 



C6e Cheerful Spirit* 

WHAT best to promote the welfare and happiness of 
individuals? The answer is simple and clear — em- 
ployment and the cultivation of cheerfulness. 

Neither the mind nor the body is fashioned for idleness. 
Both develop through activity, or fail of their proper frui- 
tion from lethargy and neglect. 

I should say that family must be nearest to happiness 
where the men in it go buoyantly to their tasks and return 
fondly to the household; where the wife finds delight in 
the innumerable duties about the house which lose the 



10 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

significance of that austere word and take on the privileges; 
where the daughters find it cheerful and gratifying to 
assist in rendering the house cosy and tidy and home-like; 
where there are flowers and bits of feminine handiwork to 
please the masculine eyes, and dainty gifts such as women 
treasure for the tender affection they embody. 

To this harmony of surroundings should be added a 
social correspondence, and such accomplishments as render 
it impossible for dullness to cast its shadow over the home. 

A man should find better entertainment under his own 
roof than anywhere else. Cheerfulness should so surround 
him that even the fatigue of labor or the harassment of 
mental pursuits causes him no ill-temper or dejection. 

To be sure petty annoyances, displeasurable circum- 
stances, and defeated desires attach themselves to every life 
— beginning with the boohoo in the cradle, and recurring 
all along the way until the second childishness expires 
like the first began. 

But these could be relieved of their poignancy if one 
took half the care to suppress them from his mind that he 
does to make his mind acquainted with them. 

Temperament is the mirror by which objects are re- 
flected to the mind. And that mirror has a pivotal base, 
by which it is adjustable to such refractions of light as we 
determine to obtain. Only most of us let it remain sta- 
tionary, reflecting objects hap-hazard, and compelling 
mental conclusions not desired, which could be avoided 
if we would compel the mirror to our control, instead of 
being controlled by it. 

Two men were discussing religion — one wealthy, with 
a happy family; a large library, paintings, sculpture, gems. 



THOUGH TS : By Brutus. 1 1 

music, and an enthralling landscape tended to further in- 
duce cheerfulness and a hopeful philosophy in one so 
blessed. But he was a miserable, despondent man. 

"I have rumaged through Christian and Pagan his- 
tories of theology," said he, "only to say with the preacher, 
'All is vanity,' and with Shakespeare, that this life resem- 
bleth 

" 'The uncertain glory of an April day. 
Which now shows all the beauty of the sun, 
And by and by a cloud takes all away.' " 

If you have found assurances impossible of attainment, 
why not do like the school-boy, who gives up a problem 
he cannot solve, sponges his slate, and goes to work on 
another sum? 

The man giving this homely philosophy was one whom 
fortune's bufTets had struck with violence amidships. His 
life plans had been formed on the basis of large means, 
which he acquired with the best energies of a diligent life, 
only to find all his means engulfed in loss by the dishonesty 
of his closest friend and partner. 

Thrust back into poverty, from which he cannot possibly 
recover, and hurt to the quick in his trust of men, what 
more natural than that his life and his judgment should 
become embittered? 

If ever there was warrant for misanthropy, it certainly 
offered to him, but he took no such turn. Neither did 
he evoke any metaphysical consolations to his assistance. 

As a sensible man, seeing his house burn down, does not 
go about wringing his hands and wailing over it, but hunts 



12 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

another house, so this man, standing amid the ruins of a 
fine career, has nurtured into growth a calm but potent 
cheerfulness that has stolen away the sharpness of his hurt, 
and instead of allowing the irremediable past to pull him to 
thoughts that could only embitter his life and demoralize 
his capacities, he is prosecuting smaller ventures as earnest- 
ly as he did the old, cheerful, interesting, and admirable. 

Contentment is always an open refuge to those who are 
battled and baffled by misfortune, if they will but woo it as 
men woo riches. 

The rich, the moderately well-to-do, the poor — none of 
these has a monopoly in this great priceless reservation of 
nature that stands between mankind and despair. 

It is the manna of the wilderness, locust and wild honey, 
and the refreshments that nourish a still and quiet con- 
science. 

Cheerfulness is the harvest of contentment, and all can 
garner it if they but comprehend the character of that un- 
pre-empted domain. If a bad man is pointed out to you, 
put by thought of him and think of some good man ; shown 
a sinful woman, think of some beautiful character; if 
wretched demands a thought, sweeten it with the joys that 
abound; if a new grave is filled, revert to happy homes, 
where love pours its ecstacies into the ears of life. 

When lonely hours come, turn to cheering books, to 
music, something beautiful in art or nature — and the gloom 
is gone. 

Wisdom, nor riches, high station — none of these inherent- 
ly provide cheerfulness of spirit. 

Many a millionaire's yacht sweeps by a fisherman's 
smack along the deep, bearing on its costly decks some 



THO UGH TS : By Brutus. 1 3 

heart further from glad, unfeigned repose, and cheerful 
contemplation than any on the fisherman's rude craft. 

Cheerfulness is not a purchasable quantity. Neither 
will it abide with any save those who are simple and sincere 
in their quest — the gentle of heart, steadfast to good pur- 
poses, and without guile. 

To these it is a counselor and a friend, defeating failure, 
healing afifliction, laying its finger on the lips of care till 
they complain no more. 



t^^t Eapture of Summer* 

WE cabined, cribbed, confined, and sweltering citizens 
of this rock-built town have no delights to while 
away the time, unless it be to spy our shadows in the sun, 
and decant on that sun's intensity. 

Our spirits, mercurial as the thermometer, tilt with the 
slant of the sun betwixt oppressiveness and sheer depres- 
sion. And we visit upon the everlasting period objugatory 
whirlwinds of reproach. For very shame we should be 
dumb against the prolific ardor of the time. This is the 
golden season of the year, but our eyes are withholden 
from its beauties, and our senses imprisoned from its un- 
speakable charms. 

How fortunate those not chained to the haunts of men, 
at liberty to hie themselves whithersoever nature says 
"come." 



14 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

It must have been at such a time that Buchanan Reid un- 
loosed his soul in "Drifting": 

"Round purple peaks, 
It sails and seeks 

Blue inlets 
And their crystal creeks." 

The clear, calm ardor of the atmosphere breathes of the 
universe in shade-sequestered nooks, wherever branches 
glide through meadows, and leafy limbs stretch out a perch 
for birds, or hang their translucent foliage overhead to lure 
some wayfarer 

"Under the walls of paradise." 

There is one stillness of the night, and another stillness 
of the day. One leads through restfulness to sleep and mere 
oblivion; the other gives the rapture of repose, and the 
sweet contemplations of unpremeditated art. 

So soft the scene, so pervasive the tranquility, enchant- 
ment enchains the soul midway of meditation and of dreams. 

Across the expanse of blue there creeps a cloud, so white, 
so light, so stately, it appears slowly to navigate the sky like 
some sail-stretched argosy on the main. The south wind 
stirs like a midday serenade of the choir invisible, and the 
trees, enamored of the cadence, release their minstrel leaves 
in utter ecstasy. 

Among the birds the rapture of the spring has gone, 
and their songs have ceased — all but the thrush ; that royal 
minstrel seems just to have found his notes and is exultant 
beyond all measure. He feels the fullness of the year. It is 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 15 

high-tide in nature; animate and insensate, all life, all things 
respond, resound, and fulminate to the top of their bent. 
Decay is nowhere to be seen, and death might be the crea- 
ture of delirious dreams, were it no more substantial than 
this summer carnival discloses. 

The passion to live is here assertive in its noblest, its 
completest forms; the universe throbs with it; the very 
fervor of the sky proclaims life! life! to the universal world. 

The borders are quickened in color; the surrounding hills 
are, indeed, arrayed in vibrant beauty; meadow and stream 
and sheepfold knoll declare the glory of existence, and the 
heart of man exults with the sacred singer. 

O! the transporting, rapturous scene, 

That rises to my sight; 
Sweet fields arrayed in living green. 

And rivers of delight. 



CrutJ) of Cfiaracter, 

T^HIS above all: To thine own self be true." 
-■• Not to the self of social exaggeration or restraint, not 
to self-interest, not to the self of other people's teachings, 
not to the outward man as afifected by the world's discipline 
— but to one's character, to the natural self, to the inherent 
man planned and produced according to the will of the 
Creator. 

I should not thus sermonize, but for the effect of a 
certain man's talk, to which I had to listen this morning. 



i6 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

He does not profess sanctification himself, but he likes to 
be regarded in that light. Really, he is a good man, de- 
cries evil, and is careful of his company. 

I believe the larger part of the decalogue receives his 
constant obedience, and if he has any shortcomings he 
doesn't obtrude them on the public gaze. 

I have known him to do good deeds, such as protecting 
the interests of widows and orphans, contributing to charity, 
lending his time to religious work, and to the relief of the 
poor and sufit'ering, both man and beast. 

This is genuine goodness of much value. But there are 
ways of debasing a fine metal. His way was to assume 
humility, and to disavow that worthiness and entitlement 
to praise which, nevertheless, he expects the listener to 
express. 

He doesn't like to exalt himself, so he merely recites his 
good deeds and his self-sacrifices in order that the listener 
may do the exalting. One point, too, that he couples with 
his narrations is the ingratitude of those whom he has 
served — not in the way of resentment or complaint, but just 
to show how the true philanthropist doesn't expect grati- 
tude, doesn't seek it, and even undergoes misunderstanding 
and reproach, persevering in good works because it is a 
pleasure to him. 

He is a literalist in his accepted creed, holding that faith 
and interrogation points do not consist. 

Sin is something he can't understand; he has no patience 
with it, and probably never read the scriptural verse that 
man is conceived in iniquity and born in sin. 

Weakness, also, is a thing that passes his understanding, 
and one thing that he cannot tolerate. If misfortune or any 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 17 

form of adversity befalls a human creature, he believes 
in doing what you can to relieve it; but if a man pulls 
down the roof on his own head, leave him under the ruins. 

So much for the charitable side of the man. On the 
positive, personal side, he observes the strict decorum, and 
draws the nicest social distinctions. The scales of an apoth- 
ecary turn not more accurately in drachms and penny- 
weights than do his precise measurements of his fellow- 
beings. Of course, he is discreet in speaking of others, and 
at times has to be obsequious to station. But he knows, 
depend on that. A cloud may be backed like a whale, or 
a camel — -he judges of that according to the weightiness of 
opinion of the man who says it. 

His amusements? He has none. He is constant enter- 
tainment to himself. His relaxation? Conversation — in 
which he does the talking, with his personal views, expe- 
riences, and reminiscences as the themes. 

He is methodical in his habits, his duties, and his dress. 
Seldom he weeps, finds life too serious for laughter, and 
doubtless maintains his dignity even while shaving before 
his mirror. 

He believes that this existence is probationary, and should 
be spent in preparing for death. I have known him to 
wear crape around his hat for the conventional period, and 
then remove it, thus announcing the beginning and the 
end of his grief. 

Sometimes I wonder how a man of his mental and emo- 
tional composure would meet such emergencies as befall 
men of different temperament — whether in a life of soli- 
tude, of seclusion, free of the force of custom and environ- 
ment, and the public gaze, he would be different from what 

(2) 



1 8 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

he is, and if, at the end of all, he could say: "I have to 
mine own self been true." 

I am reminded here of a man I have never met; one 
whom I take to be much like him, judging from an inci- 
dent of which I was told. He was one of two passengers 
in the coach of a night train during the cold weather. The 
two were good friends and men most upright and devout. 
The one to whom I refer is conspicuous in his community 
for his exemplary life, and of large influence by reason of 
his wealth. 

While seated near the stove, in conversation, the train 
stopped at a station, where another passenger got on. As 
he was dismantling from furs and a heavy ulster, the exem- 
plary man, recognizing who it was, said to his com- 
panion: "That's So and So; I never speak to him. He 
comes up to warm; let's get into the other coach." 

"But there's no fire in that coach." 

"Can't help it; I am going in there." So he did. 

His companion, who told me the incident, hesitated. 
He didn't mind the cold of the other coach so much as he 
did that way of treating an acquaintance who had seen bet- 
ter days; had been, indeed, a prominent, highly respected 
and prosperous man in a high position of trust. Misfortune 
and degradation had befallen him; he was reviled by men 
he had befriended. But he was at least not a monster. It 
was not to be contaminated to ride in the same coach with 
him. Thus reasoning, the second passenger kept his seat 
and bowed to the third. 

Was it an exemplary act on the part of the exemplary 
man to leave the coach because a wretched man entered 
who had brought ruin on his own head and on others, but 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 19 

who had also paid all of suffering that a man can pay to his 
fellow-men for a grievous wrong? 

Would the Nazarene, worshiped by the exemplary man, 
have left the coach or refused a simple salutation? Is any 
mere mortal so perfect in character and so blameless in life 
that he shall look down in scorn, when the Man of Galilee 
would have looked with pity and helpfulness? 

Could this exemplary citizen view his own action intel- 
ligently, and say: "To mine own self I have been true?" 



Pl)a0e0 of ^implicitp* 

SIMPLICITY of living is man's ideal state. Monarchs 
have yielded to its charm to an extent almost ludi- 
crously incompatible with the regal ceremonies that once 
were wont to hedge the daily life of a King. The solemn 
Pontiff of the Vatican has shorn his life of all display, and 
whilst he must deny himself somewhat with ceremonies 
from too free audience with his visitors, in order to direct 
the affairs of his office, he lives as simply, in accord with 
nature, as any country 'squire. 

Strange as it may seem, religion has been the chief nour- 
isher of man's pride. Pride readily declines into vanity, 
unless it be kept under constant intellectual restraint and 
guidance. 

Hamlet's disdain of the physical fear shown by Marcellus 
and Bernardo in the presence of the ghost, had fine expres- 
sion, much above their ken, in the words: "Why, what 
should be the fear? I do not set my life at a pin's fee. 



20 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

and as for my soul, being a thing immortal as itself, what 
can it do to that?" 

That expression is directly reflex of the religious in- 
fluence of Hamlet's time. Humility then was no more char- 
acteristic of Christian followers than it is now. On the 
contrary, the devout then, as now, felt immune from the 
fears that harass the ungodly. 

I^ook about you to-day and contemplate the assurance 
of those who profess to read their title clear to mansions in 
the sky. As confident as Hamlet, they walk the earth dis- 
traught with apprehension about others, but as secure in 
and of themselves as though they were sanctified in very 
truth. 

This pride did very well until man learned more about 
himself through the unflattering medium of science. His 
spiritual assurance disturbed, he has for some years faced 
the feast of skulls, hearing it from learned and fearless lips 
that he is made of perishable stuff. 

From this incertitude of mind, he has moved into the 
province of humility, fearful, indeed, that after all he may 
be no more than "the feeble tenant of an hour." 

The sincerely humble cannot be otherwise than simple 
in their living. It is not far along the highway of aris- 
tocracy where those who move thereon part with the sin- 
cerities and take up the insincerities of social intercourse. 
Only inordinate vanity can persevere in the mockeries of 
insincerity. Some people of good sense are drawn into the 
meshes, but they get out again. Those hopelessly entan- 
gled in them are to be likened to the daring persons who 
walk into a puzzle of hedge plants, unable to thread their 
way out, and laughed at by the spectators whom they 
amuse. 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 21 

As between the affections and discriminations of a vain- 
glorious aristocracy, and the simplicity of social conditions 
wherein distinctions are such as naturally arise, the latter 
is beyond question the rational basis, and we of this time 
are more highly blessed than any of our antecedents in the 
unrivaled democracy of existing social conditions. 

Simplicity reigns. ]\Iay it reign forever! But in this, 
as in all human excellencies, its very fineness requires the 
greater care and vigilance against abuse. 

The ordinary mind confuses simplicity with vulgarity, 
and mistakes courtesy for familiarity. 

Simplicity is a twin with refinement; it has the utmost 
consideration for others; it will not deceive, nor dissimu- 
lae, neither will it tremble nor be afraid. 

Who has it? The rough man, whose greeting is 
"Hello?" 

The acquaintance of yesterday, who is familiar to-day? 

The slovenly person who says, "I care nothing about 
dress"? 

The uneducated man who superfluously avows his lack of 
learning and then hurls his dogmas at you? 

The man who invites you to his table and eats with his 
coat off? 

No; those are vulgar people. Unfortunately,, too, they 
are as plentiful as fish in the sea. 

Often plainness is confused with simplicity. They have 
no more in common than sunshine and a blacksmith's 
bellows. 

The finest simplicity this country has ever known was 
among the good people of the South before the war. 
Chivalry that flourished then was only the simplicity of 



22 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

elegance, and elegance only the outward evidence of re- 
fined sensibilities. 

It is a popular quotation that no man is a hero to his 
valet! I will ask those who remember slave days if they 
have ever known, since then, any man to enjoy such heart- 
felt admiration as old-time negroes used to manifest for 
their masters, where those masters were of the true quality 
of Southern gentlemen? 

What constituted the excellence of the Southern gen- 
tleman? 

He was a man of simple manners, but included in that 
simplicity were sincerity and elegance. He rode well, drove 
well, hunted well, managed his affairs well, read well, 
thought well, lived well, died well. 

Another confusion about simplicity is that it means to 
be phlegmatic and uninteresting. The best simplicity is 
cordial in manner and words, hearty in its interest in men 
and events, tolerant of the ideas and sensibilities of others,i 
just with men, gentle with women, tender with children, 
and the staunch friend of truth. 



9^an'0 iBeglect. 

THE inequality of devotion between men and women is 
astonishing in its disproportion. Nature could not have 
intended such discrepancy. If there is any matter in which 
the law of equivalents should apply, it is in that of the affec- 
tions. But men have so successfully exalted the character 
and disposition of women, without developing such ad- 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 23 

vancement in themselves, the Hne of demarkation is ob- 
scured in the distance of masculine conceit. 

It is man's to exact perfection and render imperfection. 
He does literally as he chooses to do, and requires the 
woman of his love to be subservient to his ideas, to his 
pleasures, his moods, his whims. Because she loves him, 
he flatters himself that he amounts to a great deal; that he 
is strong, and wise, and good; that he is entirely competent 
to direct her life, to appropriate her affection as a gift abso- 
lutely fixed within his keeping, and considers it the most 
natural thing in the world that she should adore him and 
see in him no guile. 

In tender moments, when the better part of his nature is 
for a little while astir, he readily, honestly protests his un- 
worthiness, deplores his many neglects, his unintended 
rudeness, his oversight of little, trivial courtesies, the slight- 
est of which would have thrilled her with delight. He is 
quick and proud in such a mood to amend any recent act 
of his not in keeping with the proclivities of love. 

And these little reparations rejoice her heart so much 
that she forgives — no, not forgives, but forgets a whole 
catalogue of wounds inflicted needlessly, heedlessly. 

No gentle woman would for the world solicit a caress, 
a word of tenderness, a love-look, unless it be that in the 
famine of an uncherished heart nature cries out for love, 
as one who, perishing from hunger, cries for food. 

How many, many women have stood at the door, as the 
man of their heart departed for the day, and, longed for 
just one word — one unuttered word, just a tender touch, 
some little evidence of love, the sweet assurance that 
through the hours of absence, even though business cares 



24 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

or whatever duties employ the time, occupy his thoughts, 
that, still, there will be little memories of her such as he 
told her in the wooing days when he slipped away from 
work, from study, from no miatter what, long enough to 
send her a bunch of flowers, or sweetmeats, or any token 
which would materialize his thought, his love of her. 

But now, secure in his possession, how pitifully incon- 
siderate he is — how unmindful that no woman's heart ever 
ceases to yearn hourly, momentarily, for repetition of the 
words, the vows that won her heart, her very being. On, 
from the bridal-altar to the grave, through the precious 
hours when her young life first hovers between life and 
death in giving birth to their offspring; on through fortune 
or misfortune, in scenes of pleasure or in hours of sadness 
and of pain, along fashionable streets amidst the multi- 
tude, or through solitary lanes of heather and birds and 
leafy trees, or in the chill twilight of curtained windows 
shutting out the day that the pain-wrecked sufferer may 
know repose; on, when beauty and youth have merged 
into the sere and sallow years, the heart of woman craves 
the constant utterance of love. 

Tell her the old, old story oe'r and oe'r again. Presently 
lips grow mute, dumb, utterly, in death. The longing to 
tell unutterable love in the last hour! The sense of loss 
of unregarded hours, when one could have poured forth the 
wealth of love now waiting the fearful divorce of the grave! 
How tenderly one strokes the dying brow — the silvered 
hair, so scarce, so gray, once so abundant in its wealth of 
gold. If there be a hasty word to recall, neglected oppoi- 
tunities of courtesy, of graciousness, to appall the heart 
when the great separation comes, how bitterly, with what 
infinite reproach they smite the heart! 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 25 

Then in the after time, when years have laid their crush- 
ing weight upon you, with faltering feet, to carry to her 
grave, forgotten by all save you, a bunch of flowers — 
flowers tended by you for her dear sake, to lay upon her 
tomb — to brush away the snow, no whiter than the frosty 
hair above your brow, and place the mute token above the 
silent form which you can never clasp again. 

How like a heartfelt apology for the remissness of the 
past that simple tribute is! But it is unavailing now. She 
cannot know of it at all. Once her hands would have trem- 
bled with delight to receive those beautiful mementoes, and, 
given with a soft, sweet word of love, her arms would have 
encircled your neck and her lips would have pressed your 
own. 

If you had known about it then as you do now, how- 
much happier you could have made her; how much happier 
yourself. 

We cannot rectify the past. Every act of good or evil, 
of affection, of neglect, stands an accomplished incident, 
which cannot be undone. There may be some reparation if 
we take due heed. But there would be less occasion for 
atonement if men rightly comprehended the boon of a 
woman's love. As it is, how few do not accept it as an 
ordinary, natural fact, quite proper and deserved? 

No man deserves such love as women give. It is the 
marvel, the mystery of earth. It is the sublimest, noblest 
faculty this side of God,. 



26 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 



9 2:^omanle0$ jFuneral. 

No lovelier Sunday ever blessed a city than that of yes- 
terday. It was such a day as the imagination associates 
with all that is bright and beautiful and good — a day when 
to stay indoors is almost a sin. And by that measurement 
there were but few sinners. The driveways were thick with 
all manner of conveyances, whose occupants keenly enjoyed 
the delicious air. The electric cars carried happy thousands 
to the several parks. Women and children contributed 
their cheering influence to the day, and the cynic who could 
persevere in his obstinate opinions of life and humanity 
on such a day must have, indeed, a hardened heart. 

Brought out by these inducements, I walked about the 
streets uplifted in spirits and encouraged in mind. At an 
intersection of streets, just when the day was fairest, a 
grim procession passed me. Noting the gloomy pageantry 
of the dead, I observed that no woman lent her attendance 
to the silent march that did such violence to the joyful 
spirit of the day. 

How strange it is that women seem so necessary when 
there is sadness and distress — and death. Their presence 
lends an inexpressible comfort; their absence casts an un- 
mitigable gloom. I pondered over this until the gladness 
of the day became obscured. Perhaps it is to my disad- 
vantage to invite my readers to share in the sad thoughts 
that possess me. Still I am constrained to present the pic- 
ture. 

The procession was following the remains of a man who 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 27 

had given his Hfe to a calling inhibited by law and reason. 
It is impossible even to condone, much less to justify, such 
a course. The only woman who in such a case forgets 
and loves and follows to the grave had gone before him. 
Therefore, the procession consisted only of men. The 
majority of those men were of the dead man's calling. 

Through days and nights of suffering, in the presence of 
approaching death, they had sat where his mother would 
have been and ministered to him as she would have min- 
istered. They were not as tender as women are, but they 
were as faithful to the end. 

The casket was brought and added to the dreariness of 
the room. Without conference a common impulse directed 
them, and presently the casket was covered with flowers. 

When the hour approached to shut out forever all glimpse 
of the dead face, there was not a sob, not a tear. Men like 
those are beyond weeping. But they are not beyond feel- 
ing. 

One of the designs on the casket came from women — 
women who are not to be mentioned here. It was prompted 
by that strange fellowship of sin that shows some goodness 
left, some thought of better days. 

At the grave those worldly men stood with uncovered 
heads and listened with extremest reverence to the words 
of the minister committing to the dust, without censure, 
but with abundant hope, all that was mortal of a man 
who throughout a misdirected life retained the strong affec- 
tion of his friends. 

As the last clod fell on his grave a little girl approached 
with her mother, and, noting the strange assemblage, ex- 
claimed, "Why, mamma, there are no women here." 



28 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

The flowers the Httle girl held in her hands to place 
on another grave, she placed on poor Jack Christman's — 
a fitting close to the sad scene. And that same pity from 
a little girl let us hope ascended to that mighty breast which 
we are told extends to every erring life its wide defense. 



9iu0ic l^oiD anD l^itaL 

MUSIC is much the loser that it has no authoritative 
prophet to guide it from paths amiss, and to conduct 
in paths aright. 

Wagner was possessed of the belief that music, like its 
kindred arts, is properly an advanced idealism, not so much 
to gratify the senses as it is a psychical influence to incite 
and to inspire the mind. 

Through the emotional susceptibilities of man he sought 
to communicate mental impressions, and to fecundate intel- 
lectual activities. Through sound he endeavored to gen- 
erate thought. He would have a conductor to be a great 
field marshal of an intellectual fray, not fought with sabres, 
but with reed and horn and drum. 

Music is essentially incitive in its every form, as the at- 
tendant motions and emotions which it arouses decidedly 
manifest. It is not surprising, therefore, that a Vesuvian 
genius like Wagner, whose endowment was actively, almost 
sublimely, eruptive, highly imaginative, and multifold in 
its sympathies, should seek to conjoin, in scope and method, 
the gentle elements of music with those arts that seek, 
through reaches of the ideal, to instruct the mind for con- 
ditions better than prevail. 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 29 

But there are two distinct kinds of incitement which art, 
as a whole, embraces — one is of sympathy, the other of 
imagination. One employs existent elements, the other 
non-existent idealities born of man's incoherent, but per- 
sistent, aspirations. 

In poetry idealism finds its finest possibilities; next in the 
drama; then in fiction — but in music, hardly any. 

Wagner combined the slight dramatic elements of music 
into fine, enduring frenzies, but in no single number did he 
surpass, equal, or even closely approximate the heights of 
song already reached by other and truer masters. Conse- 
quently, it cannot be maintained that he superseded the real 
masters. Not only failing to transcend what others had 
given, he fell short of their reaches. Therefore, he cannot 
be classed other than as secondary in musical creation, 
however admirable his constructive ability be regarded. 

Just as architecture would include science with theory, 
so musical composition cannot be acceptable without con- 
cise guidance by sound philosophy. 

The philosophy of Verdi was to enthrall the heart, as 
Gounod's was to overwhelm the senses. What is finest in 
musical achievement is divided between those two immor- 
tals. 

Theirs were not the sombre, moody cells of unlucky 
thought, but theirs the course of life, of love, of fate — 
themes co-equal with time, forged in the furnace of the 
ever-present, alike with man primeval, existent, and to 
be. Theirs not to theorize, nor to exalt to "that unreal 
world, where nothing is but what is not," but to give utter- 
ance to that in man which he himself can utter not, but 
only feel, and live, and yield his very being to — his hopes, 
his loves, his triumphs and defeats; his festivals and tour- 



30 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

neys along the unassaulted march to happiness; the full me- 
ridian, jubilant and luminous, the downward slope to dim- 
mer, disappearing things, and fearfully on to the chill of 
the dusk and the gloom of the dark. 

Life, life, was their theme — life, from its source to its 
sea, not as entablatured by Moses, nor as exhorted by the 
sanctified, but as wrought, enjoyed, endured by man. 

The poet — the great poet — having one of his lovers in a 
fine frenzy rolling, put into his utterance this apostrophe: 

"See, how the floor of heaven is thick inlaid 
With patterns of bright gold. There's not 
The smallest orb which thou behold'st 
But in his motion, like an angel, sings, 
Still choiring to the young-eyed cherubim — 
Such harmony is in immortal souls, 
But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay 
Doth grossly close it in, 
We cannot hear it." 

The melody of majesty is bosomed in the stars — those 
inaudible minstrels of the sky, whose quiet, ineffable pres- 
ence is like the dear companionship of one we love — one 
beyond, maybe, the far meridian of their calm abode. 

But the heart were overburdened, indeed, were all its 
joys silent, and every sorrow mute! 

There is a vague, evasive felicity in the quality of sym- 
pathy that only heart-music, life-music can stir into sensi- 
bility — sensibility so soothing that, like a balm, it gladdens 
our own throbbing hearts with its joy, or steals away the 
sharpness of our despondent thoughts like the chirp and the 
song of the wild bird in the wood. 

Such is the music of mankind — all other is artificial, em- 
bellished, heart-vacant, and void. 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 31 



a Came IButtetflp* 

THE hopeful, happy, heart-nourished vagaries of hu- 
mankind have ever been likened to the childish chase 
after butterflies. 

Chasing butterflies! It is the earliest conception of the 
beautiful, the first prompting of childhood, to admire the 
exquisite; the primary inclining of the fancy to seek nature's 
adornments. 

How it grows upon us and dissipates its fund of love 
throughout the kingdom of the beautiful, wherein once to 
be a lover is to abide, and to revel in the delightful acquaint- 
anceship of tree and flower, of bladed grass and rippling 
water, of starry skies and the untaught melody of the 
woods; to mingle with fragrance and color and drink 
copiously from uncontaminated springs. 

And yet, poor butterfly! What of the chase for him? 
What chase is his? A little coterie of flowers to woo, the 
redolence around him, his faint yet frequent baptism, the 
sweet cheer of fugitive sunbeams his day's delight, and for 
the night the dew-bejeweled casement of the flowers 
watched over by sentinel moonbeams and slumbering birds 
in nearby retreats, breathed upon with the caressing breath 
of darkness. 

A little while of this, mingled with fright, perhaps, lest 
it fail to elude the grasp of childish hands all too violent for 
its frail being to withstand — a little while of this, and then, 



32 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

for aught we know, vale, beautiful sojourner that was, 
and is no more. 

Had it not affections like our own, our hopes and fears, 
and the mute sense of dependence that enwraps us all? 

One there is of which I have been told that quite estab- 
lishes its nearness of nature with humanity — a tame butter- 
fly that sought and won human affection. In perfect car- 
mine when the summer came, he sought a childish face 
asleep in its tiny carriage under the trees, and with uncon- 
scious boldness hovered above the little sleeper, presently 
to light on its sunny curls and kiss its eyelids closer down. 

It was a sight so touchingly beautiful that other children 
playing there observed it, and the parents, too, and, incom- 
prehensible as it seems and is, the daring insect signified 
its sense of welcome by remaining there and establishing 
recess in the infant's hair. 

Ever after that it grew more gentle and affectionate, and 
the other children formed a deep attachment for it and 
enticed it into many little pranks and follies. Verily, it 
came to understand this much, at least — that it was an ex- 
pected and delightful visitor among kindly hosts. So all 
fright, even the faintest apprehension, left it, and it came 
to light, out of its own delighted volition, in the children's 
hands, and when strangers came and wondered over the un- 
usual spectacle of a tame butterfly, it allowed itself to be 
borne from one to another in the children's palms, appar- 
ently proud to corroborate the strange adventure. 

The brief date of its life is drawing to a close, however. 
The vivid carmine has faded into brown, and the luxuriance 
of wing no longer burnishes the drooping body. The early 
frosts will claim the outworn wayfarer, and the children 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 33 

who have grown to love him so will understand the grief of 
those over another dead: 

"One morn they missed him on the 'cnstom'd, hill 
Along the heath, and near his favorite tree 

Another came; nor yet beside the rill, 
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he." 



T^HERE are certain types of men which nature should 
-■■ abolish. Maybe no new molds are essential, but there 
are some old ones that ought to be destroyed. The one 
malady of the human family apparently incurable is insin- 
cerity. It is a constant epidemic. Its forms are as varied 
as the conditions of life. In a desultory and abbreviated 
way, to consider a few of them: 

The man who shows no courtesy to his subordinates, but 
palms ofif a spurious courtesy on others, that thrift may 
follow fawning. 

The politician who relies on truculent demagogy for 
support. 

The evangelist who proclaims the gospel to be free, and 
abuses the congregation when the collections are small. 

The man who swigs liquor out of a secret jug and 
knowing that the friend will have the bag to hold. 

The man who accepts a service which he himself would 
never render. 

The man who seeks to condone his own sins by reprov- 
ing the sins of everybody else. 

(3) 



34 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

The man who swigs liquor out of a secret jug and 
publicly censures men who drink openly. 

The man who invokes the guidance of the Creator for 
his own family, and degrades the family of another. 

The man of wealth who donates publicly to worthy 
causes for ultimate profit or aggrandizement. 

The man who sneaks into evil places, and nefariously 
circulates the names of others there. 

The man who for self-advantage bears false witness. 

Added to these few suggestions of human turpitude there 
is a greater, cruder, more infamous type worthy of de- 
struction than all others combined — the female dispenser of 
scandal about other women. Perhaps no single iniquity 
approaches this in enormity. Women are not often slan- 
dered by men, for the reason that shotguns are available 
to the woman's protectors. But many a good woman's 
reputation has been destroyed by members of her own sex. 
Not by sinful women, but by those in correct walks of life, 
who ignorantly or maliciously traduce their sex. Author- 
ity should be established to have such women publicly 
branded, so that they would be known to the world as vile 
gossips and thus lose their power of harm. 

Until insincerity and imposture are eliminated by ex- 
posure, the world will continue to be a travesty of its own 
pretenses to every discerning mind. 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 35 



jFiDelitp of tt)e Dog* 

JUST the simple story of a dog's fidelity seems such a 
trivial matter at this time. Indeed, a wonderful amount 
of animal affection for human creatures continually prevails, 
and arouses hardly more than a kindly sort of recognition — 
sometimes not even that. Now and then, however, such 
attachment secures a like regard. A very fine gentleness 
sometimes characterizes the relationship between a dog and 
his master. 

When the young soldier, who lost his life by a deplorable 
accident, fell, wounded and expiring, his terrier, named 
"Stake," was at his side. The dog had practically enlisted, 
too, for he persevered over all protest against even momen- 
tary separation from his youthful owner. He would have 
been at the front as soon as his master. 

When the soldier fell, the dog tried to staunch with his 
tongue the flow of blood from the mouth. He leaped on the 
stretcher on which the wounded man was placed, and never 
left his side, even after death intervened. He was a faithful 
watcher by the corpse, and could not be persuaded away. 
Neither would he partake of food or water. 

When the body was conveyed to the open catafalque and 
the funeral procession moved, the dog was not restrained, 
but was allowed to take a place on the casket. At the grave 
his grief was inconsolable, and when the casket was lowered 
into the last resting place, "Stake" was with difficulty re- 
strained from following it. The sadness of the scene took 
on an added emphasis from the dog's distress, and a great 
sympathy went out to the faithful animal who sought to be 
buried with the dead soldier. 



36 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

Human devotion has its limitations; a dog's none. A man 
may never be a hero to his valet; he is always so to his dog. 
Through upward ways in which he shares the master's luxu- 
ries, or on a downward course apart from luxuries, devoid, 
indeed, of comfort, and maybe filled constantly with priva- 
tion, the dog is faithful and unquestioning to the end. Noth- 
ing that his master does is wrong to him — but right, and 
commands his endorsement and support. His allegiance at 
all times, under all conditions, is absolute. 

Men gain by fidelity to duty, and suffer if they violate 
or neglect it. Therefore, they have constantly the double 
motive of desire and fear to encourage them in faithfulness. 
A dog has no such selfish considerations. It is not fear that 
makes him a reliable guardsman; it is fidelity — nothing 
more. No amount of mistreatment, of hunger, of hardship, 
ever removes his affection when once it is bestowed. Abuse, 
neglect, nothing causes him to waver, and very slight re- 
turns for his devotion cause in him an ecstasy of delight. 
At the end, no loving heart more poignantly feels the an- 
guish of farewell than this mute companion. 

Man, on the other hand, rarely forgets an injury or re- 
members a benefit. Yet we accredit man with a soul, and 
deny it in a dog. 

The dog feigns no emotion. Dissimilation is in him an 
unknown quality. He rejoices with his master; weeps with 
him ; eats of his food, and shares his slumber. He revels in 
the master's sports, and takes his ease with him. By some 
fine power of comprehension he likes his master's friends 
and is wary of his enemies; vigilant at all times against 
covert or open danger that may threaten any within the 
house, and on the streets at once companion and guardian, 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 37 

whether the footstep of the master be buoyant or feeble. 
He ratifies the compact of his devotion with a fidelity as fine 
as the fixedness of the stars, and it matters not if his food 
be a banquet or a bone, his bed the rude earth in the in- 
clement night, or softly laid within the master's room, there 
is no shadow of turning in his heart. And when the sting- 
ing rap of anger falls on him, he construes it not otherwise 
but as his meed. 

Vigil through good days, and through dark days; vigil 
through the last hour, and vigil at the tomb — in one word, 
fidelity; the noblest word in all the world, for in fidelity is 
the ennoblement of love — this is the primal glory of the dog. 



Ctje potter's jFielD. 

THE almshouse for the living and potter's field for the 
dead — this is the destiny of the ultra-poor. Barren of 
resources, lacking even one friend who could be helpful for 
a little while, how many wretched creatures find the waxing 
and the waning of their lives between these two despised 
abodes! 

And yet, if the facts were known, some strange, eventful 
histories would stand disclosed within these dismal sanc- 
tuaries, these places of last resort for the unfortunate of 
human kind. Repudiated by the world, which disavows 
its own cruelty and disowns its hapless progeny, whither 
could the wretched and the outcast turn were it not for 
these asylums from the tempestuous adversities of exist- 
ence? 



38 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

Each of the dead to his history — in some instances merely 
pitiable, in others calling for sympathy; in some grimly 
romantic, and in others profoundly tragic. 

I once assisted in laying away one of the tenants of 
potter's field. A strange and interesting man he was, 
even to the end of his adversity. At a later time I went 
again to his gloomy home of the friendless dead; on the 
grave of him I knew lay a bunch of half-faded flowers. 
Strange, thought I, that any symbol of affection should at 
so late a day adorn a spot so mean that even the wild grass 
was too churlish to lend its softening green to the brown 
barrenness of the place. If any woman's eyes had ever 
moistened that forgotten grave, nobody knew it. Only one 
woman had stood by the grave when we put him away, and 
she merely to sing a song in fulfillment of a promise made 
to him years before. Now that he had passed well-nigh 
entirely from human recollection, whence came this laggard 
offering of flowers, this tribute born (perhaps) from memo- 
ries of dear, dead days beyond recall? Then it came to me, 
the love affair of earlier years of which he had told me — he 
was well-to-do then, and of some renown; a talented fellow, 
who should have gone forward successfully, but there was 
a quarrel between them, and in an hour of pique she mar- 
ried the dashing officer whose attentions had provoked 
their difference. 

He lost heart after that and — well, wound up there in 
potter's field beneath that bunch of perished flowers. 

The woman of whom he told me lived in a distant city, 
and he had heard nothing concerning her for several years 
prior to his death. He had sent her a volume of his writ- 
ings. This was the only clue, so far as he knew, that 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 39 

divulged to her his place of residence. Surely the faded 
offering was not hers! Yet there was none other likely to 
have held him in tender remembrance. I asked the sexton 
about it. A woman, accompanied by a little child, had 
come to the lodge several days before and asked to see his 
grave, he told me. "I found the number on the register 
book," he continued, "and took her to the spot. It was 
evident from the look of horror on her face that she had 
not expected to find him buried in the potter's field. Her 
efforts to conceal her grief were of no avail, and the bunch 
of flowers she held were drenched with tears as she laid 
them on the sunken grave. The little girl tried to lead her 
away, saying she didn't like such an ugly place, and wanted 
to look at graves that had beautiful tombstones and flowers 
and pretty plants over them. 

"On turning from the place the woman called me: 'I 
live away from here,' she said, 'and did not know that he 
was buried in the strangers' lot.' 

"I found her handkerchief here afterward," the sexton 
continued. "I am going to the house, and will show it to 
you if you care to see it." 

I recalled the married name of his old sweetheart. The 
handkerchief bore those initials. The sexton gave it to me 
and I put it on the grave — it would last a little longer than 
the flowers. 

"Sleep on, old fellow," mused I, turning to the city. "It 
hurt her to find you in so mean a place, but so long as it 
is comfortable to you, it is all right. You will rise with 
the balance, and in the final judgment the grave entails no 
stigma — even though it be a grave in the potter's field." 



40 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 



Circumstance anD Cftaractet* 

A YOUNG man cannot be too careful about appear- 
ances," a father once said to his son. 

The advice appears to be sound, but carefully weighed 
it will be found wanting. 

What that father should have said is: "A young man 
should build his daily life into such compact and shapely 
character that he is not a pipe for Fortune's finger to sound 
what stops she pleases." 

It is not wholesome to teach young men the fear of cir- 
cumstance. It is a stepping stone to hypocrisy. It is like 
the malarial poison of the swamp to the moral sense, and 
no man who dreads the stress of circumstances is possessed 
of moral courage — without which he is but the physical 
pretext of a man. 

If his feet be shod, do not tell him not to walk, but bid 
him walk. 

If his character be shod, do not terrify him that circum- 
stances can overthrow that character, for it is not so. 

Gibraltar is not safer from the thunderbolts than is an 
upright man secure against accusing circumstance. 

The upright man can be cast down alone by death — and 
even though he walk through the valley of the shadow, he 
shall not be afraid. 

Character is the one God-like strength in man — he who 
has it is blessed with an everlasting salvation, and he who 
has it not is cursed with all the curses. 

Give me that man whose soul declares: My mother gave 
me life and faculties; the duty of that life, infinitely finer 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 41 

than the sum of all other duties, is to develop those faculties 
and to build my character so that in this world, and in the 
other, if so be, she may look constantly upon it and know 
it to be undefiled. 

Blessed be such a man throughout the world and 
throughout the ages ! 

Let him waik whithersoever he may, let him nail with a 
hammer or preside over a court, let him conduct a bank 
or plow a field, let him sing the songs of faith or be sad of 
heart in doubt, he shall walk in honor and safety, for his 
hand is held by a mightier — he cannot fall. 



an KnciDent of tbe Street. 

THERE are hours of loneliness in every life, but, dreary 
as such hours be, they benefit us immeasurably, 
whether we realize it or not. 

But there is another loneliness which comes late and 
lingers to the end — the loneliness of age, where one has 
been taken and another has been left. The lives of a man 
and his wife twine truly into one beyond the meridian, and 
this unit intensifies wath the isolation of old age, when they 
are more and more separated from other people and affairs 
and more and more drawn unto themselves. 

The hour is inevitable, however, when such union shall 
be severed, and oftentimes it is the weaker who is left. 

Loneliness finds its consummation in the remnant of 
such a life. Yet how little the world heeds or cares about 
these individual cases of desolation. 



42 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

There is something so queer and repulsive about infirm- 
ity that we turn from it rather than to it. It is like an 
obstruction which we must walk around. It seems to carry 
a danger signal to annoy busy and happy people. It 
is something to forget. 

The day was too cold for a decrepid woman to be making 
her way alone along the streets. Yet when I was approach- 
ing my office, a crippled old woman, scantily and meanly 
clad, was climbing the pavement with the aid of a crutch. 
Just ahead of me was a tall, well-dressed, grave-looking 
stranger. He appeared to be neither ministerial nor a man 
of fashion, but there was a dignity in his carriage that clear- 
ly bespoke a gentleman. 

There was a step in the pavement that exceeded the 
woman's strength. He lifted her over it, and with her hand 
clasped to his arm helped her to the top of the hill. 

There he touched his hat and retraced his steps, with 
an expression of compassion on his face that made him look 
noble. I bowed to him as he passed, and he returned the 
bow as of a man who understood that his act of considera- 
tion for an old woman, whose life was as tattered as her 
garments, had met with a silent understanding. 

The stranger had gone his way; the feeble woman still 
has her handful of days to live alone, growing weaker, until 
presently she will be beyond walking, and after that beyond 
pain; and there in the stillness and the dark — and still be- 
yond, whatever there is of immortality and gain. 

For me the little incident stirred a feeling of regret that 
I have not oftener gone out of my way to do some kindly 
service for the helpless old, and as I recall the grave face 
of the man who, though a wayfarer and a stranger, was 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 43 

not a stranger to the divine precept that through all the 
days of his life a man should honor his father and his 
mother. 

In that simple act of his, away from the woman dear to 
him, he did honor his mother, and gave living testimony 
to the truth that a woman can so build a man in character 
that, though he travel through the earth, that character 
is secure and dominant, and over all the ways that he may 
pass he blesses and is blest. 



Cfie Hiterature of tte Pa0t» 

Is it a rational conclusion that the best literature that the 
world will ever have has already been written? 

Letters represent the best thoughts of the world. Has 
the human mind then attained its maximum of wisdom? 

The surmise, like a summer's cloud around the summit 
of a mountain, gathers darkly for a time, and lifts and 
lowers, and is borne away by wind currents to dissipate 
and then reform, to hover between the sunlight and the sun. 

"Beyond the Alps lies Italy," gave Napoleon's army a 
mighty spur to prick the sides of its intent. 

But whither are the Alps of thought? Behind us or 
before — on Sinai's everlasting dome, and Calvary's heights, 
and along the gentle Avon's resplendent course? Are these 
the topmost, the eternal peaks between us and the stars? 
If it be so still, where is "Italy"? 

The lotus-eaters sought beyond the sea some haven of 
repose, some isle of rest and dreams, "and in the afternoon 
they came unto a land where it seemed always afternoon." 



44 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

Is it in myth, in legend only, that human search and 
hopes shall have fulfillment? And is the utmost purple 
rim of hig-her thought the mere encasement of mirage, 
elusive and illusive, too? 

Let all the writings of mankind be piled deep, tome on 
tome, and still the pile is paltry as a beggar's purse to the 
insatiate eyes of human inquiry, and we vaguely realize 
that only that is new which has been forgotten. 

The insufficiency of mighty minds! How the big prob- 
lems have thwarted them, and kept them primary pupils 
still! From those whose scope was universal to those of 
definite and restricted reach, truth has been a mystery, 
approachable only to speculation and analogy. And how 
poorly reconciled with practice have been the philosophies 
of the world. 

It is a fearful juxtaposition to find disposition and dis- 
cernment opposed in the individual and in the mass. And 
yet that confused front has never lowered since the founda- 
tion of the world. 

Truth cannot be dual, therefore the seeming duality of 
thought and action is of elements in our own being, or else 
truth does not obtain to human knowledge, or our percep- 
tion of it shifts from wrong to right and from right to 
wrong. 

Not even temporal affairs have been adjustable to any 
fixed standard of truth. Equitable measurement has never 
acquired even a tolerable hypothesis from the aggregate 
wisdom of the world. We are forever doing, only to undo, 
and then undoing to do again. 

In evidence there is a fatalistic epic of the eleventh cen- 
tury — the Rubiyat — which remained in total eclipse 800 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 45 

years, to merge again into the forefront of modern thought 
as the best expression of its philosophy. 

The world cannot for long periods endure the dogma 
of Fatalism, but neither can it for long periods escape 
therefrom. And thus the sphere of human vision revolves 
in its continuous circuit, around and around, like the sun 
and the moon, with whence and whither and why in the 
distance like mysterious light-houses on the vasty deep. 

It is as the Persian had it: 

"The moving finger writes, and, having writ. 
Moves on! nor all your pity, nor your wit. 
Nor all your tears can cancel half a line of it." 

And as with the inscriptions of that mighty scroll, so with 
the tablets of the lesser mind, the moving finger writes, 
and, having writ, moves on and leaves the legion of mys- 
teries mysterious still. 

Then if the great minds of ages past have left us unsatis- 
fied, are we to abandon hope that in the future time a larger, 
clearer light will break upon the world; that we shall draw 
nearer to the truth, and that large souls will be quickened 
by it, and from out the crucible of thought some greater 
writer than the past has known will lead his people into 
wisdom? 

"Beyond the Alps lies Italy," indeed. And beyond the 
mountains of the mind is the favored land of truth, where 
all things must be good. But shall we ever come into that 
blessed land? The dead answer not; the stars break not 
their silence, and the tides of all the seas moan as they ebb 
and flow, as they did when the world was young. 



46 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 



(Gentleman in Literature* 

FROM the beginning of the art of writing, the world of 
writers has been busy with the definitions of a gen- 
tleman. 

The word is its own and only definition. 

Can beauty be defined or perfection disclosed within the 
category of a sentence? By no means. Our language is 
susceptible of wonderful condensation, but ''gentleman," 
"beauty," and "perfection" are self-epitomized, and escape 
the radius of the philologist and the lexicographer. So 
essayists on the word gentleman can do no better than to 
give examples. 

The trouble about examples, however, is that the subjects 
are so engrossingly agreeable to reflect on, that the ele- 
ment of idealization interjects itself too potently, and the 
writer is presently superhumanizing his subject, oblivious 
of the adipose tissue he must retain for reality's sake so 
long as disembodiment withholds its liberation, and leaves 
the subject a habitant of earth. 

Thackeray beat all writers in not dissolving his gentle- 
men into the thin air of ideality. He kept them human 
throughout, and in the character of Colonel Newcomb 
gave a creation that has perhaps been more widely accepted 
as the embodiment of a gentleman than any other person- 
ality in literature. 

It requires the utmost nicety of discrimination so to apply 
literalness and proper adornment that the finish will create 
the impression of fidelity and defy the test of criticism. 

This delicacy of depiction can be understood by its anal- 
ogy to the exquisite effects of the arrangement of flowers 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 47 

by a woman. They are poured in her lap a confused heap 
of inharmonious color; beauty en deshabille. With inscru- 
table dispatch her fingers, as though touched with witch- 
craft, twist and twine and shift and change the disordered 
blossoms into an array of harmonious beauty, a diminutive 
firmament of flowers. She added nothing to their beauty 
but her sense of the beautiful. 

So in depicting the character of Colonel Newcomb, 
Thackeray did not adorn it with extraneous raiment; the 
firmament of flowers. She added nothing to their beauty 
merely disclosed them. 

This is the highest form of art — not to originate, but to 
disclose. 

To be sure the value of examples in literature is en- 
hanced very largely by idealism. Indeed, literature would 
be rubbish without it; but there is a very general misappre- 
hension as to what idealism is, especially as employed by 
the great writers. It is confused with imagination, whereas 
the license of imagination is purely for poetic purposes, and 
can have no part in the depiction of human examples. 

To make clear the distinction, Dante's "Inferno" and 
Milton's "Paradise Lost" are the finest productions of poetic 
imagination, and Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables" is the 
finest product of idealization of human truth through the 
medium of the wretched. Dickens, next to Hugo, was the 
master of actual woe, uplifted into tragedy through ideal- 
istic revelation of exquisite suffering. 

The mere presentment either of vice or virtue in naked 
realism is not literature; that is the function of newspapers. 
But the use of idealism in character writing is not to disurb 
fidelity, but to afford a setting that will reveal truth in the 



48 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

finest possible degree of impressiveness, whether the exam- 
ple be Colonel Newcomb or Pecksniff. It is through this 
fine art that literature obtains its types. 

There is no writer to-day who can disclose types either 
of gentlemen or villains. The creatures of current literature 
are either commonplace or eccentric; they are not typical, 
nor so strongly individualized as to appeal to any higher 
faculty than curiosity — a faculty that has no relation to gen- 
uine literature. 

If there is any difference between the gentleman of 
Thackeray's time and the gentleman of ours, we must look 
for examples in actual life, for they do not appear in the 
literature of the day. 



C!)e IBeautp of ^impUcitp* 

T WONDER if many people ever go over in their minds 
■^ the materials they would employ if they were to write 
a book? 

There are many people who never touch a pen who could 
probably write successfully if they were not under the delu- 
sion that writing means reaching after sky-scraping effects, 
so to speak. There is a lot of such writing, to be sure, but 
not successful writing, no matter though it be promoted by 
big publishers and heralded by critical essayists. 

Simplicity of expression is to be noted of every author 
whose writings are permanent. And homely figures adorn 
every noble piece of writing in every language. Look at 
the Bible, amazing in the characteristic simplicity of its 
diction. Consider Shakespeare; uniformly his finest effects, 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 49 

his consummate strokes are limned largely in monosyllabic 
words and simple sentences that a school-boy can parse. 
The philosophy of the world has been contributed and pre- 
served in chunks. The thousand and one quotations in- 
separable from conversation and correspondence, from dis- 
course and instruction, and from daily communion with 
fi lends and our own unuttered thoughts, all are vested .'n 
our memory because of their simplicity. 

Simplicity is the seed ground of thought. It is the gar- 
den-bed of beauty. Imagination is nurtured and fructified 
in its soil. It purifies, as earthen soil clarifies the contami- 
nated water of the clouds. 

Rhetoric is the music of language, and the best of that 
music falls as gently on our sensibilities as some heartfelt 
rhyme played by a master's hand on the strings of a violin. 

But let us not construe simplicity amiss. It is far re- 
moved from the ordinary, the commonplace. It cannot be 
slovenly. It is like the whiteness of linen in a clean hand. 
It uses none other than the words that should be used, and 
in completed phrase it is perfect, so that to alter it the least 
is to mar it. It is conceived in truth and born in refine- 
ment. It has the modesty of a star and the magnitude of 
a planet. It is like the prattle of a child, yet with the ad- 
monition of a sage. Within its warp and woof are woven 
the gladness and sadness of being, and along its waters 
are the laughter and the tears of the world. 

If the world mourns the death of Falstafif, it is because 
he died '"babbling of green fields." Lear might have died 
an old, mad king, but that he struggled in the darkness of 
his mind to know if the dead form in his arms might not be 
his poor child, Cordelia. 

(4) 



50 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

Byron stood by the waters of the bay and wept that Shel- 
ley, who mastered the furthest reaches of song, perished 
no further away than one might cast a rope. Tennyson 
gave mankind its invocation against the nothingness of 
death in one calm line — 

"Thou wilt not leave us in the dust." 

And Dickens caused a world to weep over the death of 
Little Nell. 

So I wonder if there are not gentle people in the world 
to-day who might write simple books of little incidents that 
would be helpful and consolatory, and go to the upbuilding 
of goodness and character, and to the deepening of our 
sympathies. 



Cpniciism anD pergonalitp. 

HEAVEN hath given you one face, and you make your- 
selves another." 

How far transposable are Hamlet's words on feminine 
dissimulation into a metaphor on modern cynicism. 

Possibly the answer depends on our views of modern 
cynicism. According to the extent that we sympathize with 
cynical views must be our exemption of cynicism from re- 
proach. For if the secondary face be reflected from the 
mirror of truth, we cannot afford to contemn the involun- 
tary contour thus produced. The fact of the endowed 
features being plastic would indicate the authority of the 



THO UGH TS : By Brutus. 5 1 

mind to shape them according to its conclusions. If this 
authority be conceded, the hypothesis goes with it that the 
later face may be both supplementary and complimentary 
to the original, and, therefore, supersedes the primary face. 

The face of youth is more pleasing to the eyes and the 
sensibilities than the seamed and gnarled and care-cut face 
of age. But to which must we turn for communion, for 
guidance, for apprehension and comprehension? Expe- 
rience is a rude, violent sculptor, but when it is through it 
has chiseled a chart. The mind, too, is a virulent invader, 
softened somewhat, but not retarded, by reluctance. It is the 
arch-inspector commissioned to discover the genuine and 
preserve it, to detect the spurious and destroy it. This mis- 
sion it has prosecuted from the primal, eldest time, accord- 
ing to its lights and its strength. And this mission it will 
never cease to prosecute until the clear land of truth 
stretches at its feet, or until the race itself is swallowed up 
by the limitation of existence. 

The mind is not to be baffled by protest, nor restrained 
by delusion, nor terrified by the wreck of hopes. What is 
true is true, and all else is vain and valueless. If truth con- 
fronts us with horror, we must face that horror. To do 
otherwise would be to be engulfed in cowardice and de- 
voured by darkness. No matter how rough the sea, how 
rock-bound the shore, feed the light, gird the mind with 
courage, and press on to truth, for there is no other haven 
whose shelter is secure. 

The mind is captain of a various crew. It has its road 
hands, its section bosses, its superintendents, and its inspect- 
ors. To each is allotted some labor necessary to the com- 
pleteness of the work. To the inspectors is entrusted the 



52 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

report of conditions, both as to material and the character 
of construction. These inspectors are known to us as critics, 
serving the function called in chemistry assaying. Accord- 
ing to the reliability of their reports is truth revealed or 
misrepresented. 

The ranks of criticism have grown into an immense body, 
and their reports are divers and conflicting, although there 
is in progress a remarkable mobilization of a majority 
around the postulate of evolution as the principle of life. 
This postulate disturbs many long-established dogmas. A 
certain order of minds accepts the promulgations of science 
with equanimity; another rejects them for the old, or with 
considerable license fuses the old and the new; while a third, 
ousted from old faiths and averse to the new, turns head- 
long into cynicism, failing to distinguish between criticism 
and cavil. 

This third order of mind is fast growing in volume, and 
instead of maintaining merely its intellectual conclusions, in- 
fects the personality of its communicants. It extends to 
actual personal embitterness against the whole order of ex- 
istence. The developed cynic of the day gives over the very 
cosmos to the rule of the powers of darkness. He forswears 
all allegiance to the order of things, discredits integrity in 
the body of men, calls virtue hypocrite as a social unit, and 
proclaims degeneration into the elementary state of total 
depravity. He pities the good, reviles the pretender, and 
has nothing to admire but the avowed villainy that flaunts 
its recklessness in unabashed confession before a decadent 
world. 

All that he escapes of utter wretchedness is his own up- 
rightness of life, where that is preserved. And it is only 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 53 

just to sa}^ that cynics, as a rule, are not themselves de- 
graded. They are merely soured against the world, out of 
touch with its aims and means, deprived of self-content, 
without hope in the race, finding nothing to revere or to 
worship except in the charnal houses of the past. 



Cjje Silent ^iDe* 

CONFLICT between armies has its griefs as well as its 
glories. Among the multiplicity of considerations 
which the prospect and the act of war entail, the woman's 
side is not the least. Yet it has no voice, no determining 
influence. As silent as the sea, on whose breast the im- 
pending issue is to be resolved, they contemplate the strife 
without a murmur. 

It is well to inquire, to consider whence comes our armies 
and navies. From the cradle to the cemetery men belong 
to women. First, it is the mother; after her, the sweetheart, 
and then the wife. 

No man is denied the love of woman. It is the most 
pervading fact of life. One cannot pass through the wards 
of a mad-house that some little token of feminine affection 
will not confront him, even though it be for one who has 
lost all cognizance. 

Out of gladness and agony women give to the world 
its life; out of gladness and agony they share men's careers, 
and out of gladness and agony they yield them finally to 
death with a degree of fortitude almost sufficient to estab- 
lish faith in religion in the most troubled mind. 



54 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

The President is quite right in his resolution that the first 
draught for service in battle shall be from the ranks of 
bachelors. They are furthest removed from the ties that 
cause such sorrow in the dissolution. But only the ignorant 
jester can believe that to destroy those solitary lives would 
leave no woman's grief behind. 

Thus sadly mute in the proposition of war, let no man 
conclude that women are indifferent to its purposes. They 
answer at last its utmost penalties. The soldier finds an 
active and sufficient inspiration on the field, and the sailor 
on the deep. Danger becomes alluring and death trium- 
phant in the fierce argument of arms. Only the most utter- 
ly craven taste of fear in the midst of battle. 

The horror of war is not on the battlefield. It is in the 
stricken home, where women yearn for the unreturning 
brave; where love mourns its irredeemable loss, and yet 
rejoices in the valor that perished. To say to the dearest 
creature of the world. Go! with cheer and endorsement, 
muffling the agony of the heart, is a nobler, finer courage 
than all the heroism of the world's wars combined. 

And what woman ever failed, or will ever fail, to say 
just that little, awful word when the occasion calls? Con- 
scription would be an unheard of shame if the sons of 
women but had their fortitude and loyalty. 

In the whole catalogue of crime there is but one which 
will assuredly destroy, beyond all restoration, a woman's 
devotion, and that is cowardice. No woman forgives a 
dastard. He is the object of her perpetual scorn, and 
whether he be son, lover, or husband,, he stands forever 
excommunicated from her tolerance. 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 55 

Thus silent, but understood, war has her sanction, in 
extremity, and she meets in the gloom, in the solitude, the 
horror of it all with a spirit of resignation that proclaims 
her divine. 



jForce of Cftaracter. 

MEX can only be judged by the results which they 
accomplish. The world has no time to devote to the 
study of particular men behind the results of their labor, 
except in the study of the few men of extraordinary promi- 
nence — a biographical study rather than psychological 
scrutiny. Behind every material accomplishment the poten- 
tial factor of that accomplishment is character. 

This fact would be of large value to young men if char- 
acter were more readily discernible in its true reach and 
compass. Unfortunately, in strong men, character is not 
near enough to the surface to be thoroughly discerned in 
tlie many whose deeds interest us, but whose personalities 
escape our knowledge. In this way young men find their 
reliance on the value of character confined too narrowly 
to historical personages and contemporary public men, who 
can with diiificulty be studied as they really are. 

Relief from this circumscribed and superficial view of 
weighty men is to be had by close inquiry into the lives 
of successful men with whom we are in daily contact. 

Looking to one such character that attracted me years 
ago, and still interests, I shall refer to the qualities of his 
character, while desiring to have it impersonal to the man 
himself. 



56 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

First of all, he realized, early in life the essentialness 
of definite purpose — that purpose to be not only definite, 
but persistent. He allowed for obstacles, determined not 
to be easily thwarted by them. He found them, too. Not 
least among them were the opposing judgments of other 
men, together with the discouragement of sometimes being 
misunderstood by people of hasty opinions, such as men 
of affairs never fail to encounter. His maxim in such cases 
was: "What another man's hand finds to do, that let him 
do. What my hand finds to do, that must I do. If the 
likes and the dislikes, the opinions and actions of other 
men are to interrupt and confuse mine, I can hope to ac- 
complish nothing, but if I forge ahead, I shall at least be 
true to my purpose and my hope to win." 

This made him single-handed, and, thus he has con- 
tinued. 

Firmness and obstinacy are severely incompatible, yet 
they are parallel lines in close proximity to each other, and 
it is easy to throw the switch between them. Good judg- 
ment is the only safeguard against this danger. He had 
the safeguard. In dealing with men he has manifested 
something of Richelieu's course, which was: "First, all 
means to conciliate; failing these, all means to override." 
This is strength. 

Strength by no means deprives a man of the two quali- 
ties which should attend it — tolerance and equity. Pos- 
sessed of these, this man, pursuing his resolute way, has 
many times made foes friends, all the while enlarging his 
own perspective as a man of will, of action, scrupulous of 
his obligations, and not too severe on others. 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 57 

The course of such a man cannot end in failure, and, if 
his ultimate objects be good, considerable certainty sur- 
rounds their attainment. So it is with him. 

Along with his successful attributes he has carried, as all 
men do, handicaps of his own making. Yet when his sixth 
age shifts into the lean and slippered pantaloon, the wail 
of failure cannot molest his strong composure, nor dread 
of public judgment restrain him from well-deserved pride. 



AWAY back when the century was new some gentle- 
woman found in her note-book the suggestions out- 
lined below, which were commended as valuable articles of 
toilet for her sex. They seem so desirable and are so avail- 
able to any who may take a fancy to them, that they follow, 
with such interpolations as might be expected from one 
who doesn't know the least about the subject: 

First — "Self-knowledge, a mirror showing the form in 
the most perfect light." The handglass of my lady is not 
more universal than the mirror of social contact in which 
they reflect one another, but in how many boudoirs is there 
that glass of introspection which reflects not the coiflfure, 
nor the dress, but the elements that form the character? 
How strange that people seek constantly to know others, 
and yet remain unacquainted with themselves! 

To be sure, any mirror reflecting the character of a 
woman must show much that is lovable, but perhaps it 
might reveal slight defects apparent to others, but unknown 



58 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

to one's self. Then she could daintily brush away such 
imperfections, until presently, the practice continued, there 
would remain not a blemish. 

Second — "Innocence, a white paint, beautiful, but easily 
soiled, and requiring continual care to preserve its lustre." 
It runneth not in the mind of man to imagine a cosmetic 
more delectable to behold. Forwardness in woman is like 
the envy of a flower to be a plant. 

Third — "Modesty, a rouge giving a delightful bloom to 
the cheeks." Well said, truly, for without modesty the 
gowns of a queen, the jewels of Persia, the perfumes of 
Araby, could not enrich in loveliness her whose nature 
lacks this consummate charm. 

Fourth — "Contentment, an infallible smoother of wrin- 
kles." Yes, a smoother of wrinkles, not only for her who 
has it, but for those who come under its benign influence. 
Care flies from its presence, and it exhales sweetly over life, 
like the breath of new mown hay to the senses. 

Fifth — "Truth, a salve rendering the lips soft and de- 
licious." And something more — rendering the soul sus- 
ceptible to whatsoever influences are good. 

Sixth — "Gentleness, a cordial, imparting sweetness to the 
voice." The charm of gentleness is more tO' be desired than 
beauty itself, and without it the most beautiful would arouse 
resentment, that this superlative charm should be lacking. 

Seventh — "Good humor, a universal beautifier." To be 
peevish is a curse. Woman's influence should be to bright- 
en, not to blight. Ill-humor may be nursed and treated in 
illness, but she who is lacking in good humor as a constant 
quality cannot be considered other than a plague. 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 59 

With the primal estate of womanhood supplemented by 
these graces, the last, best work of the Creator merges 
into the nearest approach to perfect loveliness which the 
finite world mav know. 



Pl)a0e0 of a ^oman. 

THE world persists in attributing the genius of its great 
men to attributes derived from their mothers. Even 
though this be merely due to sentiment, it is so admirable 
that only a rude pen would seek to disturb it. Let mothers 
be always first in our adoration. 

But to my mind there is another creature in the house- 
hold who is but rarely blessed with the devotion or the 
gratitude which is due her — the grandmother. 

The Creator's plan never ceases to beautify and purify 
woman's character. At first there are a few years of flower- 
like prettiness about her, and then a period of ripe per- 
sonal beauty. That is the charming stage, when men 
"make fools of themselves" about her, and when she herself 
is most foolish, not knowing her own peril, unconscious of 
the rocks that hide under the shallow water that appears 
so deep. 

It is then, ere yet the slightest comprehension of the value 
of character in men has dawned on her consciousness, that 
she is apt to regard him with the greater favor who under- 
stands the wiles and ways of flattery, the influence of good 
looks, and the persuasiveness of fine clothes. 



6o THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

A man truly in love knows but little artifice, and that 
little he will withhold from her. The very intensity of his 
devotion compels sincerity, for it is sincerity in her that he 
desires above all else. It is not in this as in other matters, 
that simple, unquestioned belief satisfies — he is not content 
to believe; he must know that she loves him. And that 
knowledge can only come to him through his own absolute 
honesty with her. 

There are many little ways by which a woman could 
prove the character and extent of a man's devotion almost 
as positively as a chemist assays metals. Only she doesn't 
care about the matter, one way or the other, until she falls 
in love, and then, with a greedy ear, she devours his dis- 
course, and the voice of all the world cannot start a ques- 
tion of him in her mind or a doubt of him in her heart. 

There is something exquisitely fine in this abandonment 
of reason to a consuming passion. But reason cannot be 
rid of, for good and all. Some day it will return, and will 
be the more exacting for its banishment. Many — more 
than many, multitudes of women — have cheated themselves 
of paradise rather than consider aught against the man or 
aught unfavorable in the future. 

As long as the hearts of women have no divination, but 
see only through the physical eyes, so long will there be 
blighted affections and ruined lives — and this will be for- 
ever. 

Thus at a stage when a woman is personally most at- 
tractive to men, she is most dangerous to herself. Nor can 
all the experience of the centuries avert that danger. She 
views her own cause as one altogether without precedents. 
The gravest problems of existence haven't even the dignity 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 6i 

of a simple riddle to Love. Fortunately, most of these 
impetuous adventures culminate in happy marriages, so, 
after all, caution does not seem to be an intruder. 

Once over the shoals of hazard, and after the happy 
wife is also a happy mother, the felicity of life is hers to a 
more eminent degree than to any other class of the human 
family. Her nature has attained a blissful fruition, the 
summit and expanse of loveliness. 

But there is for her an estate beyond loveliness — a state 
nameless, because language has not attained, cannot attain, 
the exquisite refinement essential to designate it. Nothing 
human should be called divine — the divine is of another 
sphere; the human is of this world. And I, for my part, 
am content to rejoice in all excelling virtues as human 
virtues. But certainly the nearest approach to the divine 
wrliich is accomplished on earth is vested in the word grand- 
mother. 

The twilight of the day, the autumn of the year are hers. 
Hers, too, the croon of years ago, when her young life 
turned its immaculate bosom to a world half good, half bad, 
and all uncertain. And now, pausing a little while before 
decay, how white her long existence shows as she waits, 
ready and unafraid, to yield it back to her Creator. Three- 
score years and ten hover over her like a retinue of honors 
hedging a queen. The sunken cheeks and every little deep- 
traced wrinkle are witnesses of the sorrows that crept into 
her life and gave her pain — not the pain that steals away 
the sweet and substitutes the bitter, but that gentler agony 
which chastens into perfect tenderness. Many are the times 
she has followed to the grave some treasure of her heart, 
and in the after silence of the nights she has wept alone^ 



62 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

anheard, unknown, in the solitude of her widowed room. 
But her griefs are her own; her help, her cheer, her kindly 
presence are for those who remain to her. 

There is ever some dainty touch about the house that 
came from her feeble hands, and the slightest word in praise 
of it makes the whole day beautiful to her. 

She is too modest and uncertain to profifer advice to her 
children's children, but when they come to her caressingly 
and seek it — why, let Victoria go on advising the British 
Government and be as happy, if she can, as this old grand- 
mother. 

When merriment reigns in the house and the guests 
take up the dance, half a century of care is forgotten, 
and the scene becomes transfigured to that other ball of her 
girlhood when first she moved through the harmonious 
mazes of the waltz heart to heart with him who became 
her partner not only for the dances of the evening, but for 
life. 

But these little fugitive memories do not employ her life 
by any means; only when they do come they are so pre- 
cious. She lives in the present, however, quite as much as the 
youngest of the family. Indeed, she lives for them, minis- 
tering to them in illness, encouraging their bright hours 
and consoling their dark ones. She is thrifty, too, and 
many a penny is saved to the household every year through 
her good management and counsel. 

At last the autumn grows chill, the dark falls earlier and 
continues longer, the trees have lost their raiment, birds 
are heard no more. Then comes the snow and enwraps the 
earth. 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 63 

Inside the house fires burn cheerfully, but all is sub- 
dued, for a strange, unwelcome presence is in the house. 
Over the white coverlet a little emaciated hand, still whiter, 
who in gentle tones repeats: 

"1 am the resurrection and the life." 

The eyes of the old grandmother see no more; her ears 
are dull forever to earthly sound; her heart has felt its last 
joy, its last pain. All is silence, and hope, and faith. 



C6e ^in of SDmtoion* 

I REMEMBER a day's travel in a Pullman car. Outside 
there was an unbroken stretch of snow and all the drear- 
iness of a midwinter day. 

Things go by contrasts, and an old bachelor is never so 
aroused to the sentiments that cluster about the past as 
when the uninviting chill and gloom of a peculiarly wintry 
day render him so disconsolate over the empty present 
that, in sheer despair, he seeks the only solace of a wretched 
heart — retrospection. 

In the stillness, the fixedness of one's apartment, the 
backward contemplation is apt to be tinged with bitterness, 
if not with the morose. Resentment, too, will marshal its 
troops of reproof against the disappointments which it is 
so much less tantalizing to lodge against one's surround- 
ings than against one's self. But in the charm of motion, 
the sense of putting all disagreeable things behind, the 
thrill of escape and flight, maybe toward nothing that 
allures, but at least away from much that aggravates — it is 
under such conditions that one can muse without bitter- 



64 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

ness, and reflect without gloom. The cold, gray bleakness 
outside is quick to lend an ideal flavor to the luxuries 
within. 

The first of these luxuries is freedom — nobody to whom 
you have to talk, or, better still, to whom you have to 
listen. For companionship there is an agreeable book, not 
so exacting that one omits the other pleasures at hand, but 
pleasant enough to invite attention at proper intervals. 
Then there are those chiefest stays of bacherlorhood, one's 
favorite cigars. Let it be confessed, also, that there is, 
perhaps, a sample of "case goods" to give a better flavor 
to the apollinaris or soda — and, mayhap, to one's thoughts 
as well. 

Perhaps fifty miles of the way I had the car to myself, 
the conductor and porter having appropriated to their use 
the drawing-room for the purpose, as I judged, of playing 
casino. Old scenes seemed to flutter at my feet along with 
the flakes of snow outside. 

At one of the stations a very beautiful woman was as- 
sisted into the car by a well-dressed, but not impressive- 
looking, man. Without personally knowing them, I knew 
who they were. They had been married probably two 
years. It was said at the time that it was a marriage of 
convenience on her part, and one of infatuation on his. 
Whilst she had not professed any love for him to her asso- 
ciates, they yet looked upon the nuptials with great equa- 
nimity, if not approval, as it was known she was not in 
love with anybody else, and his ardent devotion promised 
to satisfy that need of every woman's life. He would win 
her to him in time, they thought. Perhaps she hoped 
as much. 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 65 

Nothing so arouses the envy of an old cast-ofif as the 
happiness of a couple who are secure from the repudiation 
of the sweetheart stage under the chattel mortgage of mat- 
rimony. It was easy, therefore, to lay aside the unreal 
romance of my book, and the vague traceries of fancy, 
for the living presence of love. "If you have improved 
your opportunities," thought I of the husband, "one might 
find a new theme for a novel — 'Married for money, but 
subjugated by love,' or something of that sort." 

After they were seated he sent the porter for a news- 
paper. The wife gave an order, too, for a magazine. He 
took the paper and went into the smoking-room. He re- 
mained there perhaps half an hour. She had glanced unin- 
terestedly through the magazine and sat peering out into 
the desolate day. Her face lacked the sweetness of sadness. 
Somehow I imagined that sorrow would be a relief, suffer- 
ing a recreation to her famished heart. Think of what it 
must be to have a destitute heart — especially if one has 
tried diligently to content it with what poor husks are 
offered. 

No words were exchanged when he resumed his seat by 
her. He didn't seem to think it necessary, or she to expect 
it. He simply stretched himself out and was presently 
asleep. She passed the time looking abstractedly ahead or 
musingly into the snowy landscape. The day wore on 
without fifty words exchanged between them. 

It was easy at last to understand that there was no es- 
trangement, no lover's ridiculous reserve, but indifference 
on the man's part and acquiescence on hers — not that in- 
difference which is a stranger to love, but that indifference 
which possession entails on a man of ordinary nature. 

(5) 



66 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

He had withered, in two years, all the higher cravings, 
all the better hopes of her life, and she was sinking to his 
level day by day. She appeared to realize that her share 
of life was not being delivered at full weight, but did not 
comprehend definite deficiency. The trouble could readily 
be surmised by anybody who has given much study to the 
relationship between men and women. After marriage 
he had left off all the devotions and deferences that enam- 
ored suitors know so well how to bestow, and had, daily, 
increased the sins of omission, until his young wife was 
absolutely changed of nature as the flower loses its fra- 
grance, its color, and its vital force from a protracted 
drought. 

I thought to myself, if the husband had been all the more 
attentive to her after she became his wife, and filled her 
life with the tender homages that every wife should have, 
from the marriage-altar to the grave, she would have come 
to love him, and both lives would have been complete, and 
both natures uplifted, instead of dragging in the mire of 
the commonplace. 



Ct)e JFamilp 15urping (SrounD. 

\ LMOST the first thing we turn to in our home papers 
■^^> is the death column. So uncertain is life, so certain 
is death, that we seek to know about the death-roll before 
we consider the living. Perhaps in the darkness and hush 
of the night, or maybe in the strife and struggle of the day, 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 67 

in any of its innumerable forms, death may have come to 
some we knew, mayhap loved — some solace, some dear 
companionship may have inflicted deprivation on us while 
we slept, or while in the midst of duty, of pleasure, or of 
pain. So we must needs look to that gloomy part of the 
paper before all else. 

So looking, yesterday, I read the death notice of one un- 
known to me. Only it read that the body would be con- 
veyed to the country and be interred in the family bur}dng- 
ground. 

The family burying-ground ! The solemn, sacred mean- 
ing of those words! 

A wealthy citizen of New York, during the absence of 
his only child, a daughter, whom he sent to Europe to be 
educated in art, took her, when she returned, to a costly 
house — new, magnificent; a palace rather than a home. 

"This," said he, "is to be my bridal present to you." And 
the same architect who devised its construction was en- 
gaged by him a little while afterward to build a family 
mausoleum. 

I do not like the phrase "family mausoleum." It seems 
to say: "The lowly bed of clay assigned as the resting 
place of ordinary mortality is not nearly good enough for 
me and mine. Putrefaction is an early tenant of the earthen 
tomb. To his banquet he invites insatiable worms, and the 
feast is appetizing from the very foulness by which nature 
resolves all her forms of life into their original constituent 
element. I am above this base necessity, 'Tis true the 
house I have given my bride-child cannot always be her 
home. The common destiny must be hers. But she is 



68 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

too beautiful, too dainty, too infinitely dear for the vile 
habitude of the grave. So I will build to her, here, a living 
monument, wherein gentle, slow decay will cheat the worms 
of their employment. And in this monument of marble 
she and I and all who are of my blood shall lie in undis- 
turbed repose till the last trump!" 

I do not blame him — perhaps I envy him the mausoleum. 
Not for its magnificence — that matters not, but for its se- 
curity against the worms. 

There are others, too, whom I am disposed to envy. 
One, in particular — he made his will in my presence, and 
in it stipulated that his body should be burned. I would 
have liked to duplicate that provision for myself. I believe 
I have thought better about the matter since. Incineration, 
I am sure, is the sensible method of disposing of the dead, 
and, further, I believe that eventually it will be the custom 
— perhaps compulsory. 

But if there should be any matter of an individual's own 
choosing, it should be in the disposition of his body. Com- 
ing into the world with no volition of his own, yielding his 
existence without volition, having lived as best he could, 
whether poorly or grandly, the world owes him the slight 
privilege of choosing the means and conditions of his final 
rest. 

So much for his right in the matter. But cremation 
smacks at once of fear and vanity. In what are we better 
than our progenitors? They raised no question of choice 
against the grave, but abided the dreadful issue like men — 
strong men, valorous in life, unafraid in death, realizing 
the committal of their bodies to the grave with no unusual 
precipitate sense of horror. How many, how many millions 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 69 

have gone the accustomed way and found consolation in 
the thought that after life they would be laid to rest in 
the family burying-ground. 

"Take the wings of morning, 

Traverse Barca's desert sands, 

Or lose thyself in the continuous woods 

Where rolls the Oregon — 

Yet the dead are there; 

And millions in those solitudes 

Have laid them down in their last sleep." 

After the turmoil, the tumult of it all, the love, the joy, 
the pain, the anguish, the wild, unyielding regret, dead 
memories that rouse the ghostly life and die again; the 
hopes, persistent as a flower, subjected to clustering and 
killing frosts which hang in terror over us — after all these, 
sin-stained or pure, when the end has come is it not best 
to be borne to the old family burying-ground and be laid 
close to those, the loved, the unforgotten, in whose lives 
and hearts you were a link? 

The family burying-ground! Obscure, unvisited perhaps, 
save by the wild flowers and the wild birds of summer, and 
in the drear winter left to moaning winds and snow and 
solitude. 



jFeminfne amiaftilltp* 

TT is strange that a woman should seek the suggestions 
-*■ of bachelors about matters pertaining to feminine char- 
acteristics. And yet how readily we non-competents re- 
spond with one opinion, without embarrassment or hesi- 
tancy. 



70 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

It must be that married men are so happy in their estate 
that they have neither the time nor the incHnation to ad- 
dress themselves to the prospective bhss of others, while, 
on the other hand, unmarried men are supposed to deliver 
that sort of experience from the lives of others which the 
spectators in a theater derive through the representation of 
many sorts of plays. 

Inasmuch as curiosity is at the bottom of such inquiries 
from women, mistaken suggestions are not apt to have 
over-serious regard, so that no harm results. Therefore, 
he would be indeed a crusty old bachelor who would with- 
hold his views in answer to a feminine note like the follow- 
ing: 

"You know the peculiar esteem in which authors are 
supposed to hold literary critics. It is a view of mine that, 
in the social relations of the world, married men and 
bachelors occupy positions similar to those of author and 
critic. But rail at the critic as we may, his opinions are 
deemed necessary, whether they be accepted or not. Pray 
tell me, then, as on onlooker of social doings, what quality 
is most desirable for women who are not equal to the 
requirements of brilliancy?" 

I should say that there is one quality which adorns 
women even better than brilliancy, and that is amiability. 

As to how amiability is tO' be applied, how made a con- 
stant characteristic, is a question that transcends this 
"critic's" understanding. Men have the cares of the world, 
and women the worries. A woman can worry over a very 
large matter, or a very trivial one — if large, her worr>^ will 
be equal to it; if small, her worry will be just as great. 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 71 

Whether this fact ever restrained any man on earth from 
matrimony is extremely doubtful. But it has at least con- 
strained many an old bachelor, who makes it his special 
charge to be concerned about the welfare and felicity of 
women in the abstract, to establish his ideals of the gentler 
sex in the world of fancy. This is in keeping, he thinks, 
wnth the only alternative left him. which is to magnify his 
dreams into realities and to personify his ideals into exist- 
ence. He has his heroines, even though they only live in 
books and are his only by courtesy of the author. 

Women in general, since Shakespeare's time, owe him 
either gratitude or a grudge. He was the first of great 
writers to reverse the ancient order of illusionary women. 
Poets and fiction writers in the early times filched their 
feminine divinities directly and entirely from imagination 
and left the actual women of the world to their low estate. 
It was Shakespeare who first contrived to mould women 
compositely from nature and ideality. His women are so 
provocative of idolatry that we seek about to find their 
veritable counterparts. Failing in the search — not because 
they do not exist, but that we seek as though for the sub- 
stance of a song — men decry living women, magnify them- 
selves, and spend the balance of their years in love with 
false creations or sit as censors and counselors of the sex 
at large. 

Who can blame women of fiesh and blood for objecting 
to ideal standards compatible only with creatures of a less 
degenerate world? 

Very few people, whether men or w'omen, choose to 
fashion themselves materially different from nature's mould. 
They have their ideals, not to imitate, but to admire. Say 



72 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

to Mary Anderson, "Be always the Lady of Lyons." She 
would answer, "No, Pauline is a charming creation, but so 
is a poem or a picture. I am human, merely human; for 
an hour I may be Pauline, but for the natural term of my 
life I am myself. Furthermore, I am content to be myself." 

Say to some domestic woman, "Be brilliant." 

Why should she not reply, "I have no desire to be bril- 
liant; there would be precious little opportunity to display 
it if I were." 

But say to her, "Be amiable," and, if she be not already 
so, you have at least indicated a tangible and attractive 
virtue which she may acquire, if she choose. 

Leave fantastic women to the hours of fancy, for to exem- 
plify them is to provoke the real woman and to fail in im- 
proving her. The work of the Creator would have to be 
undone and refashioned if women are to please man's limit- 
less exactions. Even were they to rise to Shakespeare's 
types, would men rise with them? Certainly not; rather 
they would be dragged back to earthliness again. Men will 
not say this much, but they act it, they live it. Feminine 
prototypes should not abide in books, but in mansions, 
whose latch-strings would respond to our soliciting. 

Men could very easily make of actual women creatures 
more charming than all the Olivias and Rosalinds and 
Juliets, if they would, and no longer find them only in 
dreams and books, in summer moonlight or winter embers, 
in the baleful fire of confidential cigars, on the far borders 
of mountain tops, or in the shimmer and sheen of covert 
streams which drift through silence and solitude vaguely 
searching for the sea. 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 73 



Cl)e 2^ap of ILo\3e« 

WE are only pilgrims in this little world, journeying 
through pain and pleasure a brief time, then lost in 
nothingness. All save love is vanity. Yet the spirit of the 
time flaunts love, and few are the hearts wherein it finds 
shelter and continual residence. Men work hard and save, 
and many grow rich and build fine houses, filled with all 
desirable things but love. They do not allow themselves 
to think of what they miss in this pitiful deficiency, and 
substitute for it the vacuous indulgencies of society. 

So out of joint is the time with the full flow of sentiment 
that love is a meaningless word, a nonexistent quantity 
in the general mind. 

Love does exist, however, albeit its numbers are few, 
and it is just as precious, just as beautiful, as joyous and 
tragic as in the days of the Garden. 

Love sequesters its Eden and its Inferno, and yields the 
exterior life of its votaries to the ordinary and detestable 
grind of existence. Of ourselves we truly know but little, 
and of others we confuse as knowledge that which is no 
more than blown surmise and vagrant apprehension. Still, 
there are times when the elementary sympathies of men 
are aroused over love's tragedies, and we are halted to 
contemplate some insistent woe. 

A newspaper dispatch went over the wires yesterday 
from a Missouri town, which told of a young man and a 
young woman who were found in a dying condition in a 
buggy by the roadside. They died two hours later from 



74 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

the effects of morphine, which they had taken with suicidal 
intent. They had been keeping company for over a year, 
and had intended to marry, but unfortunately the man was 
injured in an accident this summer, necessitating the ex- 
penditure of the money he had saved to marry on. After 
his recovery he decided he would leave home in search of 
work. A note to his mother was found in his memorandum 
book, asking that they be buried in the same grave. He 
gave as the explanation of the deed that they could not 
marry, and would rather die than be separated. The 
funeral was held to-day and they were buried in the same 
grave. 

Is it not pitiful that a twofold grave was the best blessing 
which fate had to bestow on those young lives? Think of 
the innumerable men and women to whom life is burden- 
some and stale, possessed of useless abundance, mere hang- 
ers-on, whose lives are of no earthly account — these fate 
constrains to live when nothing but unhappiness remains. 

And those two in the springtime of life, "under the walls 
of paradise," seeking the everlasting union of a common 
grave rather than to be separated in life — what a cheat 
poverty offered them, and not a helping hand in all the 
world to succor them when it would have cost so little to 
save! 

I would rather have invested the needful money in their 
joyful scheme of happiness than in any bank stock on this 
earth. A young man capable of that sort of love and win- 
ning the love of a girl who yielded her life for it, was 
incapable of dishonesty, incapable of failure — the very sort 
of stulT of which true manhood is made. His was the sort 
of life to be valuable, to have run its natural course. 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 75 

He was rash, it will be said. But the man who says it 
never loved — or, if he did, so lamely and half-heartedly as 
to be unworthy of the name. 

There are two extreme sacrifices that love can make — 
one, death like theirs; the other, and harder one, separa- 
tion. This latter is possible only to the grown who have 
lived through sorrow and are acquainted with grief. 

Loneliness cannot give strength, but it coerces into en- 
durance and constrains to duty. There is something stifling 
in separation which youth cannot endure, and if the course 
of love leads thither, death becomes as a bridal altar. 

In a world where the affections of the sexes are so large- 
ly founded on grossness, and even restrained from the finer 
wells of sentiment when stripped of that — in a world so little 
favored with that fine love that changes not with time or 
circumstance, that is as loyal as a star to the firmament, 
and as clean as the essence of nature direct from the Crea- 
tor, what an infinite pity it is that two noble lives merged 
in love like that should have no other fruition than the hor- 
rible nothingness of the grave. 



IF country folk could only know the blessedness of their 
estate, in opposition to city life, the hegira of young 
men from farms to towns and cities would be largely re- 
duced. Oddly enough, a glamour invests places of accu- 
mulated population, and young men, especially, eagerly di- 
vorce themselves from their native surroundings in order 



76 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

to cast their fortunes with the city's throngs. The club 
appeals to them with imaginary charms, whilst the corn- 
field repels their every inclination. 

Annually large numbers of young men abandon favor- 
able rural surroundings to convert their careers into the 
urban pursuits of the maddening crowd. One of this de- 
luded class said to me: 

"I have had occasion to discriminate between the coun- 
try and the city in a peculiar way. In order to escape the 
restlessness of a sleepless night, I stirred abroad in the city 
recently just at dawn. The night hackmen were driving 
to their stables, tired as their steeds and eager for the rest 
at hand. Street venders of night wares had ceased their 
occupation, and here and there a policeman around them to 
greet the new day, which meant to them repose. Soon ice 
wagons and meat wagons disturbed the silence with their 
noisy rumble and the clamorous call of the driver. 

"Later the sidewalks yielded to the hurried tread of work- 
men going to their task. Electric cars began to contribute 
their harsh sounds to the gathering dissonance of the day. 
Then came young women, girls, and urchins on their way 
to arduous work, and, as the hour advanced, clerks and 
business men joined the motley throng of passers-by. 

"Soon the great wheel of city life and strife was in full 
motion; another day was assuming its complex scope, 
bringing happiness to a few, wretchedness to a few, and 
duty to all. I saw no flower, no tiniest blade of grass, no 
glimpse of sunshine — only brick walls, rock streets, and the 
mighty brood of care which envelops a city as clouds ob- 
scure the firmament, save for the rifts which still disclose 
the supernal blue of that vast dome. 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 77 

"I could but remember," he continued, "some other 
dawns remote and quite dissimilar from this; dawns which 
exposed in marvelous beauty the purpling east on the crests 
of distant mountains while yet the darkness infested every 
nook and corner of the slumbrous valleys. The larks, 
weary of repose and eager for the day's ascendency, were 
the first inhabitants of the solitude to stir abroad, as though 
to greet the fields of morning-glories and dip, enamored, 
into the silvery universe of dew outstretched between them 
and the paradise above. Their profuse strains of joy elimi- 
nated from the human creature all thought of sorrows past, 
all dread of those to come, and as they soared and sang 
to meet the newer day, one's hopes, one's aspirations, one'.s 
faith in the ascendency of good followed them in their flight 
toward the eternal blue." 

My friend spoke truly of the two daybreaks; the one ob- 
scured by man, the other revealed in consummate charm 
bv Nature. 



an OBncftanteD CalenDar* 

T^HE man who devised milestones was more than a sur- 
-■■ veyor — he was a philosopher as well. They serve not 
only to compute distances, but to shorten them. A far-off 
goal is discouraging. Man is impatient of results. A day's 
journey would seem tedious, indeed, but for the stone sen- 
tries along the way that tell at encouraging intervals of 
something accomplished. 

The traveler learns to measure his journey between mile- 
posts instead of considering the ultimate destination. This 



78 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

dissipates the sense of weariness that attaches to a pro- 
longed, unbroken waste of way. Just so with the journey 
of Ufe. The years are mile-posts that tell of something 
accomplished. Whether one has grown fainter or stronger, 
the record has been advanced — the goal has been short- 
ened. It may be a goal of deliverance from adversity, or 
a goal of prosperity — either way, one can take his bearings. 

The new year is a relay. The sense of fatigue is over- 
come, and one feels that he is shifting the harness to a fresh 
team of hope and energy. There is a look backward for a 
moment, perhaps, provocative of a sigh for what is left 
behind over the way that none retrace, but the journey 
wages inevitably forward, and so, after patting gently the 
jaded old steeds of endeavor and disappointment, one turns 
to the proud and prancing animals that we know as hope 
and energy, and with a sounding crack of the whip of de- 
fiance, he is off again to the next relay. 

To be sure, there is a sort of reckoning at each relay, the 
saddest of which is of some dear companion lost, whom 
one hoped to have, side by side and heart to heart, along 
every furlong of the way. But Nature in her beneficence 
does not mingle sorrow with despair, but resolves grief into 
aspiration, for the lost one's sake. So-, too, of failure and 
infirmity — she drains them of despondency and extends 
again the empire of success. 

There is something pathetic in removing the exhausted 
calendar. Turn back the pages of the months — oh, how 
quickly the eye can review what it took so long for the 
mind to master, the heart to experience, the body to endure! 
It seems, now, like a brief-told tale, but in the living what 
an extended, what a varied drama! 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 79 

How odd the immediate issues of the year seem in review, 
compared to the enactment of them! How elevations dimin- 
ish to the backward glance, and how perspectives change 
with motion! Events momentous at the time dwindle in 
retrospection, and trivial incidents grow large. Energies 
misapplied and opportunities undervalued, all have their 
measure of reproach. Little violences done to affection 
smite the heart, and weaknesses indulged show like rude in- 
truders on the conscience. 

But, if the expiring year bears reproofs, it also has con- 
solations, and these sweeten its departure. Then, too, the 
new calendar draws us on to its clear margins, and on no 
page is there a trace of disappointment or distress. Every 
month shows hopeful and helpful, and, as it displaces the 
old record, the past bows in homage to the future and 
goes its way. 



Jf!3ature anD Cute of Q^elancljolp. 

1\ /f ELANCHOLY has three origins — heredity, acci- 
^^ ^ dent, and cultivation. 

It is a repellant condition to observe — a perversion 
against nature. Yet it possesses certain fascinations for its 
victims. 

The fascination of opiates had once a confessor, and he 
confessed directly and intelligibly. Melancholy has had no 
confessor, and only one analyzer, and he so dreadfully pro- 
found, or interminably dense, that his "anatomy" obscures 
rather than discloses the nature of the afifliction. 



8o THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

Charles Lamb might have furnished a true essay expos- 
ing it, had it not so enveloped his own life as to compel 
him to f^ee into the realm of imaginary felicities. 

We are simply our own free-will observers, then, of this 
strange malady. 

Its strangeness is stranger still if we but bear in mind 
that melancholy is a property of the young — not the very 
young, not the callow, but the young just stepping into 
maturity. 

If it were a sort of dejection arising from old age, it 
might, with less difficulty, be comprehended. But it cor- 
responds with the prologue, not the epilogue of a play. 

Unchecked, not uprooted, but allowed to become acute 
and chronic, it has been known to be incurable, and to 
attend the victim through middle age and old age, on to 
the grave. In that malignant form, however, it develops 
into melancholy, a mind diseased — which is a phase ulterior 
to our present interest in the subject. 

It is quite enough if we carry our equanimity through 
the waste places of that gentle melancholy which is not 
a settled gloom, but a transitory dejection, more sweet than 
bitter — like the mists over gardens in long summer dawns, 
ere the warm radiance of the day has turned those mists 
into regaling and beautifying baptism of the flowers. 

Between this gentle melancholy and sorrow, the differ- 
ence is like that between the dew of a summer night and 
the frost of winter. 

Somehow, all gentleness seems touched with melancholy, 
just as the east at daybreak is ever so faintly tinged with 
purple. And in my poor delight, I must acknowledge the 
sweeter influence of violet hues than the redundant colors 
of the rose. 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 8i 

Laughter is pleasanter from hearts that have wept; eyes 
loveHer that have been veiled in sadness. 

We are chastened into our best refinements, and our 
sterling traits are purified in the furnace of experience. 

The melancholy which is hereditary is not essentially an 
infirmity, nor are we altogether warranted in calling it an 
affliction. Instead of settling as a gloom, it may find the 
way to gladness. Instead of being as a smoked glass, it 
may be as the lens of a microscope which determines 
minutely and faithfully that which otherwise is confused 
and indistinct. 

The youth of melancholy inclinings will not play foot ball 
at college, but he may master Herschel, or Darwin, or 
Spenser. He may not hold flowers for a young lady in an 
opera box, nor court the favor of his barber, but he may 
acquire languages and learn the philosophies of mankind, 
or travel and identify himself with the antique and the 
modern worlds. 

When poets have been most disconsolate, literature has 
derived many of its finest treasures. 

Accident rendered Homer melancholy. Had he found 
at hand employment for easy livelihood, there might have 
been no Odyssey, no Iliad. 

Men there have been who were insufiferable scapegraces 
until bereavement saddened them, whereby they came to 
their senses, and after gloomy meditations made something 
of their lives. 

Others there have been who, out of great disappoint- 
ments, have cultivated melancholy, like other men who 
cherish up their wrongs. Intellectual conclusions some- 
times deprive men of their faiths in goodness here, or in life 
beyond the grave, and they, too, are bowed in melanchol}'. 

(6) 



82 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

Perhaps the great volume of melancholy in the world 
is chiefly due to disappointed affection and to disgruntling 
views of life. Fortunately, both of these conditions can be 
overcome if, instead of nurturing them, the common expe- 
riences of men be assiduously invoked by those thus de- 
pressed, whereby they are lifted out of the gloomy isolation 
of self into communion with the body of men, and with 
nature in all her visible forms. 

Love is not a failure, even though one fail in it. Life 
is not a failure, even though one may not have it as he 
would. 

Man is made flexible to' necessity; he should not cultivate 
himself to be inflexible. He is made finite in his percep- 
tions; he should not despair because the infinite is inscru- 
table. 

The next hour's breath is in every being a contingency, 
and brief at best. There never yet was a marriage that 
it was not known death kisses the lips of love; love kisses 
the lips of death. 

We know not what a day may bring forth. Because cf 
this, should we walk with aimless feet? Beyond the present 
we know not anything. Therefore we should employ the 
present as eternity, holding fast to those things that are 
good, the chiefest of which is buoyant cheerfulness — and to 
this shall be added the serenity that fails not in the hardest 
trial, and dispels the utmost dark. 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 83 

iFour0cote geat0. 

JOHN RUSKIN has observed of the marriage state that 
to a young man his wife is his sweetheart; in his middle 
age, a companion; and in old age, his nurse. 

In the last moments of Henry Ward Beecher's life he 
turned to his infirm helpmeet, who had been at his bed- 
side for weeks, through the dark and the day, ministering 
to him with the tenderness of half a century of unity, and 
stroking her silver hair, he said: "You have been a faith- 
ful nurse." 

I knew an old couple who lived beyond the golden 
anniversary of their marriage. Their home was in a little 
country town. From the marriage-altar to the grave in 
m.Uiual devotion. No word contrary to love ever passed 
between them. Their daughter, dying, committed to her 
mother the care of five children. An onerous charge on an 
old woman. But it was regarded by her to the last with 
a consecration worthy of heavenly creatures, rather than 
poor mortality. I never saw her that she did not look to 
me like one transfigured. 

In their later years she was an absolute nurse to her 
husband — as much so as a mother to her child. Indeed, 
she lived several years by sheer will power in order to 
survive him. She said to me in those years: 'T could 
stand the grief of separation, but he could not; his mind 
would give way under it, so I want him to go first." 

She certainly strove hard to live for his sake, but human 
destiny turns out awkwardly sometimes. She was the first 
to go. 



84 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

I found him at her grave oiie lovely afternoon in autumn. 
The birds were singing- their happiest, as though in mutual 
ecstasy; the dead, beautified leaves fluttered about from 
grave to grave like things of life, little wanderers uncertain 
of their way. 

On the grave where he stood was a bunch of flowers. 
Every day for a twelvemonth he had placed fresh flowers 
on that holy dirt. He fell ill afterward, and could go there 
no more. Then every day he sent the beautiful emblems 
he could no longer carry. 

When his end came he rejoiced, saying: "She will have 
to wait no longer." 

And a princely soul went forth to join its mate. 

He was buried close beside her and, mortal or immortal, 
the two are one for all eternity. 

Only one of his early life-long companions survived hirr.. 
All the others, the pioneers, had confirmed the fact that 
death allows humanity no exemption. And I think of that 
solitary man of the past as prompting Oliver Wendell 
Holmes in "The Last Leaf": 

The mossy marbles rest 

On the lips that he has press'd 

In their bloom. 
And the names he used to hear 
Have been carved, for many a year. 

On the tomb. 

The only sustaining stafif in aged solitude, when all who 
formed the dear companionship of life are dead, and naught 
remains but memories and decrepitude — when the grave 
threatens hourlv with its dismal habitude — in such a time 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 85 

the only comfort is the knowledge of a life well spent, and 
freedom from regret. With these consolations, the man of 
years sinks to rest just as 

"The full-juiced apple waxing over-mellow 
Drops in a silent autumn night." 



a Dap in tl)e Country* 

NATURE is doing its utmost just now to persuade coun- 
try folk to be contented with their lot and to eschew 
all envy of cosmopolites. In field and pasture, along se- 
cluded roadways, and in new-leaved groves, the refreshing 
scents, and sights, and sounds of summer have supplanted 
all vestige of decay. The cooped citizen of the city, given 
a day in the country, sets full store by these enticements of 
nature, in comparison with the artificial allurements which 
constitute his recreation throughout the major portion of 
the year. For limited periods he may invade the moun- 
tains or enjoy the sea as a respite from urban occupations. 
But these are enjoyments in which nature is not truly and 
exclusively the hostess. 

For such entertainment he must seek secluded country 
places, where the encroachments of man's skill have least 
disturbed and not destroyed the primeval lavishness of 
Nature's plans. A plunge in deep beds of grass, with the 
nostrils close to the sweet-scented earth which holds the 
eternal secrets of life and death, of growth and decay, and 
of growth again, makes tame and meaningless the plunges 
in the stolid waters of the sea, which only cleanse the body, 
but do not inform the mind. 



86 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

Man's sweetest songs are those that "tell of saddest 
thoughts." But the choirs that occupy the trees in unre- 
strained delight exult in concerts of untutored art, which 
embodies the ecstasy of life — an art ignorant of pain, and 
unaware of death or aught that disembodies joy. 

And, then, the inanimate life, as it is termed, of flower 
and plant and shrub; what acquaintance holds such charm 
as to know them aright in their inexpressible solace and 
significance? The streams, too, allure the hearing and 
cheer the mind in their exquisite sweetness of compliance 
with the eternal law that bids them musically tO' seek the 
sea. 

But the senses of scent and sight and sound do not ex- 
haust this rural charm. With twilight and evening star 
there comes a hush that leads to revery. The past is again, 
and, mingling in its retrospects, the keenest pleasures and 
the most poignant sorrows of other years arouse and dis- 
solve in the crucible of reflection, and fill the whole creature 
with a yearning to be better, wiser, worthier to be loved 
by those still left; if not for one's own sake, for the sake 
of those dear souls in the tomb whose happiness depended 
on us, to whom we gave pain none the less cruel that it 
was unintended. 

And as the darkness descends on flower and field, and 
a mute heart that still can strive upward for the sake of 
others, there comes at least desire, if not resolution, to be 
better — to accomplish more in the contest of life. A day in 
the country is not time spent in vain. 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 87 



Cte lvalue of Personal 0rototl), 

13 Y no chance does nature allow duplicates in human 
■■— ' character. Not even as between father and son are 
the two precisely alike. Purpose is evident in this plan of 
differentiation, and, as far as individualizing can be ration- 
ally scrutinized, it is intended to multiply the competitive 
energies of the race. It is through the individualizing of 
the sum of energy that complexity arises. Complexity does 
not, at first thought, appear to be desirable. Because of 
this men are forever proselyting others, to bring them over 
to their side of things. These eflforts at conversion have 
never failed to employ whatever constraints they could 
effectually apply — even to the constraints of force. But 
constraint is offensive to men beyond the point where it is 
of mutual advantage. Therefore, beyond the point of re- 
ciprocal benefits, constraint arouses a resistance superior to 
itself. 

If men were yielding, confusion would abate and might 
eventually disappear. A general simplification of human 
affairs could be accomplished if the amalgamation of the 
race were Nature's purpose. But the world's history shows 
Nature to have carefully limited the scope of amalgamation. 
And even where fusion has attained unusual volume, as in 
the distribution of Latin people, redistribution has segre- 
gated them again. 

Homogenity itself can attain such volume as to stag- 
nate the energies. Take China, for instance, the laggard 
of populous nations; its radical trouble is not over-popula- 



88 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

tion, but over homogeneonsness. In the entire field of 
biology it is evident that Nature detests sameness. Con- 
sider what a proportion of her birds are migratory. So, too, 
with grasses, trees, and other wild orders of life that trans- 
plant themselves through agencies of wind and wave and 
human means, that strangely come to their assistance in 
spreading over the earth. Evolution is the law of change; 
it promotes energy through the mediums of versatility. It 
varies the son from the father, season from season, soil 
from soil. Greater folly never assailed the mind of an indi- 
vidual than that, what was good enough for the father is 
good enough for the son. The statement leaves the wheel 
on a slope where it cannot stand. The instant it ceases to 
ascend, it begins to slide down. As with the individual, so 
with communities and nations — where progression pauses, 
retrogression begins. 

Sameness of life, of belief, of everything has locked 
China's wheels. Out of this comes indolence first, and then 
degeneracy — these are the penalties of a natural law that 
tolerates no abuse. 

Oftentimes the complexity of conditions in America is 
so disgruntling in present confusions and so ominous of 
future evils that we grow sick at heart over the apparent 
hopelessness of adjustment, and long for some such idyllic 
life as that of the quiescent nations of the East. It is not 
for long, however, that any of us would enjoy suspended 
vigor, and there are never many at a time who are so dis- 
posed. Individually we tire, break down, or wear out, but 
as a nation our activities never rest, but increase, and our 
energy does not diminish, but augments. 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 89 

Wagner, in music, undertook to embody the great prin- 
ciple of evolution — the embracing of much in little; the 
intensification of influence through the medium of origi- 
nal developments of integral parts thrown into a vast con- 
solidation. The undertaking is beyond the genius of one 
man, or many men — it must be the labor of centuries. 

Just so with the harmonizing of man's intellectual and 
social conditions — evolution alone can accomplish it, at last, 
far ofif. Evolution produces the timber, as well as builds 
withal. It has no contract time in which to complete 
its work. It builds fast or slow, according to the material 
at hand. 

The progress of the world, therefore, is according to in- 
dividual development. With personal welfare and personal 
accountability in the foreground, each should press on ac- 
cording to his light, seeking, above all things, to render 
his own mind trustworthy as a guide rather than to depend 
on the advice of others. There isn't much in advice. It 
rarely fits the case. Besides, asking for, or accepting ad- 
vice is like being a borrower from a bank. Try to be in- 
tellectually solvent — in all that it implies. Give the mind 
healthy exercise. Touch life at many points. Look with 
friendly eyes upon your fellow-men, and purge yourself 
rather than physic others. Foster your integrity above 
every growth in the field, and your mind will come from 
its hiding and be your surest and most steadfast ally, re- 
buking error, upholding right, and standing as first media- 
tor between man and his Maker. 



go THOUGHTS: By Brutus, 



are 15acl)elors of ^ortftf^ 

ARE bachelors of any actual value in the social worth 
of communities? 

"Yes," will be the reply at the end of this article, but not 
before some explanation is presented of an answer appar- 
ently anomalous. 

As an object lesson, bacherlorhood is like a lighthouse 
above the reefs of unsafe waters ; it stands for avoidance. 

But the value referred to is not that of warning; it is a 
positive value, and not negative. The masculine married 
element must be held to the charge that, lapsed in time and 
family cares, they let go by the important acting of social 
functions that blend communities into harmonious refine- 
ments through the social code. 

Marriage has, to be sure, a salutary effect on men. Let 
the word — salutary — be emphasized into its fullest mean- 
ing, for it applies with eminent propriety to this statement. 
Indeed, man unmarried is essentially a failure; which is an 
obverse statement that man married is a success — the sig- 
nificance of which establishes the excellence of social con- 
ditions. 

Married men and bachelors are relatively to society as 
the regulars and the volunteers to the country's army. 

Thus conceding the married man's superiority of condi- 
tions, he will be left to take care of himself from that place 
of vantage in the observations that follow. 

Not to say it in levity, the shirt waist is an abridgment 
of genteel dress. It is a distinct decline. The shirt-waist 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 91 

man of the future will be a married man. The coat-wearer 
of future summers will be the bachelor. Be sure of these 
facts; they mean much, and furnish a key to the answer 
that bachelors are of actual value in the social world. 

The married man can afford, or at least does afford, to be 
indifferent about his dress; the bachelor cannot. That in- 
difference proceeds from the consciousness of having played 
in the social game and "won out." The accessories of 
courtship become, after marriage, as superfluous and ridic- 
ulous as the cast-off costumes of a mask ball. Put them 
away, anywhere, and with them hustle off attending recol- 
lections. 

A gentleman of wealth, who married for love, was telling 
a party of us of the romantic episodes of his courtship. 'Tt 
must be often a source of pleasure to remind your wife 
of those little incidents," some one remarked. 

"Oh, I don't bother her with such foolishness; it's quite 
a while ago; and only you fellows are always going back to 
the past and stirring up a lot of sentiment." 

Not "bother" her about it! Not bother a woman by 
painting again, living again with her those old, sweet 
days — angels and ministers of grace defend us! 

Dress is alluded to as a key because it is a potent factor 
in manners, and manners constitute — well nigh everything 
pleasant in human fellowship. The bachelor never forgets 
his manners. Elegance grows on him, and with him — ele- 
gance; not that counterfeit semblance that smirks and flat- 
ters, that condescends and makes obeisance, but that ele- 
gance which is sedate and simple, broad-based on affability. 

The bachelor is pictured sour; he is rarely so. He is 
pictured a woman-hater; he is no such thing. He does 



92 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

what no married man does — loves other people's children. 

He is sentimental, and for that it would be a wise world 
to rise up and call him blessed. This old world would be 
a freight boat stranded in the ocean of life instead of the 
grand passenger steamer that it is, if somebody didn't keep 
senviment prodding at destiny. 

Observe a group of bachelors — it is a certainty they are 
slandering no women. Can groups of married men all say 
as much? 

Because of his aloofness from married life, he is left much 
with books and meditation, and with dreams — these people 
his imaginary world with women, and women, indeed, they 
are of very different mold from the "ideal" creatures in the 
fancy of men who seek dance halls and poverty lofts for 
their contaminate divinities. 

That question again: Are bachelors of any actual value 
in the social worth of communities? 

Yes. 

1% Oglinegs! a T5ar to Lotie. 

HERE is a note that does not deserve to be thrown into 
the waste-basket. The other alternative is to publish 
it, and make answer the best I can: 

'"The interest you seem to feel that people should be 
happy in this world gives me incentive to enclose herewith 
a faithful photograph of a gentleman to whom I am en- 
gaged. He loves me; I love him. But he has moods, the 
most unaccountable — moods in which he discredits and 
despairs of my affection. Not that he believes I dissem- 
ble; only in those moods he declares and believes himself 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 93 

too ugly for any woman to love, and persuades himself that 
I am about to make my life a sacrifice to his devotion. 
With him I would be infinitely happy; without him I could 
only be wretched. Tlie picture, as you will see, does not 
represent a handsome man, and were it his only credential 
to a woman's heart, I must be frank enough to say he might 
be justified in being an infidel in love. But I love him, 
and if he were convinced in a general way that women not 
only can but, in very many instances, do love men who are 
ugly, I am sure I could supplement the argument with such 
devotion that his moods of incredulity would disappear in 
happy certainty. Help me, therefore, I beg you, and in ad- 
dition to relieving his unhappiness and mine, it may be your 
kindly aid wall bring into more perfect faith the loves of 
others." 

If women did not love ugly men, love would be an over- 
whelming and egregious failure. A very small proportion 
of the male sex is handsome. 

Very few women have the candor, the clearness of 
sight of my correspondent. 

It is a happy disposition, yet a condition attendant on 
love, to be blind to defects, to imperfections. Therefore, 
whom a woman loves is not ugly — not to her. In down- 
right truth to other women, to men, he may be ugly, but fo 
the one woman who loves him he is not ugly, for the reason 
that those qualities in him which win her love soften and 
obscure mere imperfections of form and visage. 

In the young, the general proposition is true that the 
outer visage communicates the impression of beauty or of 
ugliness. With them beauty is an object of the eyes, the 
senses; it has no semblance in moral, or intellectual, or 
natural attributes of virtue. 



94 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

Given an unseen hero, whose valor, whose self-sacrifice 
has won a nation's favor, every girl in the land is "wild" 
to see him. He comes — already pictured in their fancy, a 
handsome fellow, a match for the knighthood of medieval 
times, another Trojan sighing for his Cressida. But lo! he 
comes, a plain, uncomely youth. What disappointment! 
What resentment! How his chivalrous deed shrinks into 
the commonplace! 

But flov/ers hardly outstrip young women, so rapid is 
their growth, and from "sweet sixteen" to twenty is a 
period only less brief than from twenty to twenty-five. And 
in that little while the heart has come into joint jurisdic- 
tion with the eyes, while the judgment creeps into a nearby 
cranny to be third arbitrator where the others disagree. 
Thus are the eyes deprived somewhat of sovereignty, al- 
though it seems to be a purpose of nature for woman's 
eyes to have first say in her affection, even from girlhood 
to the period of her last bestowal. 

Conceding, as the physiologists maintain, that it is a 
wise propensity in woman to be attracted to healthy and 
handsome specimens of the genus homo, nevertheless it is 
a well known, indubitable fact that men of the best phy- 
sical structure often lack the virtues that should attend that 
excellence, such as intellectual strength, the gifts of genius, 
and the moral force to be of dominant or even secondary 
account in the management of the world's affairs. 

Nature is in all things opposed to centralization. Her 
first love is of variety; her strongest disposition is toward 
distribution. We call her most beneficent quality the law 
of compensation. Her dignities carry burdens; her bur- 
dens, dignity. The princess in the palace often must bury 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 95 

her heart's desires and lead a Hfe as vapid as the creature 
of a play, while in the fastness of some mountain, far away 
from all report, a girl of the solitudes falls in love with 
one whose love of her makes all that wildness tame and 
beautiful, and fills each day with gladness unutterable and 
complete. 

Variety is nature's pleasure; compensation, her adjust- 
ment. 

Do you know why powdered wigs, knee-breeches, lace, 
were abandoned as ornaments of gentlemen? It was be- 
cause they associated men too much with women, out of 
which degeneracy grows, and mischief, vain thoughts and 
impure desires. 

A man too much impressed with his good looks, his win- 
ning qualities, will not be loyal to one women; if he be 
apparently so, it is to deceive. His vanity will control him, 
and a man controlled by vanity is unscrupulous. 

A man handsome is not to be derogated therefor; he is 
to be congratulated, and can render himself an object of 
admiration to men as well as to women. Ill-looks are to be 
deprecated; they are inevitably a drawback; but they can 
be subordinated and even obscured. 

At last, in daily contact, in the close relationships where- 
in love thrives or perishes, looks are hardly considered. 
Constant association reconciles us to faces just as voices 
become agreeable in those dear to us. 

Character has most to do with love, and amiability next. 
Character regulates the doings of one's life; amiability, 
one's conduct and attentions and the little nameless acts 
wherein love veritably feeds. 

Thus it comes to pass that men and women are loved 



96 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

for what they are; not for their looks. Because of this, 
love alters not. It does not lapse from separation; suffering 
only increases its devotion; hardships, misfortunes, render 
it tenderer. All happiness grows in gentleness, because 
love grows in considerateness and fondness all the way to 
the grave. 

^alue of %iv\t in Witiiin^. 

THE study of style in literature is more general among 
readers to-day than our critics apprehend, else their 
reviews would include, instead of restricting to such paltry 
mention, a commentary upon the literary as well as the 
intrinsic quality of a publication. 

Even upon those who do not consciously consider the 
dressing, the quality of the salad has efifect, in some degree, 
according to its preparation. Instances, indeed, are numer- 
ous wherein essays and stories and spoken compositions, 
meager of substance, have won much favor, just as many 
substantial productions, on the other hand, have found de- 
ficient favor because of a lack of polish. 

In older days men have climbed into high places, and 
even to-day do, through gaudy, tawdry phraseology, mis- 
taken for eloquence or rhetoric. 

But distinct from charlantry, there is plainly noticeable 
a gratifying growth of appreciation of style in writers. 
There was a period of popularity for degenerate construc- 
tion, particularly in fiction. Faulty idioms, avalanches of 
dialect, and other debasing influences did considerable vio- 
lence to our language. But the gullies did not wash too 
deep to be filled, and better drainage is even now visibly 
under way. 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 97 

The civil war seriously retarded literary genius North 
and South, and in its gradual resumption there were many 
points of weakness, and even slovenliness, to overcome. 
Other pursuits than literature claimed the attention of the 
stronger minds of both sections. Literature became an 
abandoned ship, although it should be said to the credit 
of the volunteers who took charge and became its crew, 
that they were not pirates, and when one was found among 
them they isolated him from their fellowship, and kept the 
deserted craft afloat in peaceful waters. 

Still, the closely post-bellum men of authorship may be 
characterized, in general, as lacking strength with elegance, 
or elegance with strength. Readers, no less than authors, 
contributed to this unpromising situation. Literary hay is 
sown according to the grazing. Coarse food was the best 
to be had for the body, and the mind was nurtured about 
as poorly. 

Not men, but circumstances, were accountable for this 
lethargy of letters. 

Nothing this side of the firmament is more enduring than 
literature. Periods of obstruction assail it; huge eclipses 
have obscured its finer luster, but never has it suffered the 
eclipse of darkness and extinction. 

Following every renaissance, it has regained all that ap- 
peared lost, and increased the wealth of its treasury with 
added lore. 

Treasury it may well be called, for it is the museum of 
mankind, wherein is contained all of every generation that 
the grave cannot destroy or conceal. It is the residuum 
of the mind, the repository of thought. 

It is the custodian of time and clime, in whose keeping 
are the archives, the very annals of the race. 

(7) 



98 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

In its vast vaults are stored all that man has gathered 
of the divine. The structure of the earth is its foundation. 
The dome of the universe is its capstone. The everglades 
of eternity are its domain, and the heart of man is its 
dwelling place. 

They give John Ruskin's body to the grave. Let it be 
so. His works do not follow him — they will abide forever 
with man. The last crypt in the Temple of Westminster 
should be his resting place. And with those sacred relics 
of the past that grand cathedral of immortals should be 
sealed, that its manifold tomb harbor no meaner dust. 

Thus closes the Victorian era, and with it the low, dark 
verge of a century. But who would be so rude as to lament, 
while on the utmost purple rim of the exultant East such 
a chariot of fire bears the new century to us as that which, 
it is recorded, translated the prophet of old. 

Let us exclaim with great gladness, not because of a 
Kipling, or a Tolstoi, or an Ibsen, but because of the love 
of literature that has enveloped America, particularly, with 
an all-pervasive embrace, until materialism itself has be- 
come a servitor to this idealistic vitality of letters, which, 
with art and the drama as handmaids, will establish the 
new century on the throne of imagery, and reflection, and 
revelation, infusing into its reign fancy and sentiment, and 
establishing a deeper love of the beautiful — as of one we 
know, and not as of one who comes only in dreams. 

Most beautiful of all is the priestess of letters, standing 
amidst snow and vines of living green by Ruskin's grave, 
expectant, radiant, discerning within the russet mantle of 
the East a benediction and a boon. 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 99 



aeniu0 anD 221ealtl). 

COMMERCIALISM is the lion of the hour. Its roar is 
loud; its maw swelled to bursting; its claws bloody 
and uncut; its ferocity unspeakable. 

It has displaced families of gentility from long-possessed 
homes, and occupies premises from which its newer tenants 
would once have been excluded by social status. 

On its crest is the motto: "Acquisition; not inheritance." 

The man who once greased the wheels of other men's 
carriages now rides in his own. He no longer sits on top, 
but inside, and makes boast of his rise. 

His proudest hours are those over an over-laden table, 
when he entertains his guests with interminable reminis- 
cences something like this, while a big diamond flashes on 
his shirt, and wine sparkles in the glass : 

"You will hardly believe it, gentlemen, but my father 
was a very poor man, and once, when some neighbors 
dropped in on us and asked to borrow a little silver for the 
church entertainment, my father, not thinking about silver- 
ware, of which we had none, dived into his pocket and 
produced several silver coins and told them to help them- 
selves," etc. 

But it is not the commercialist's banquets that concern 
others — he is entitled to them, and welcome to them, 
heaven knows. It is in things of general and public con- 
cern that he is obnoxious. 

All minds at all sane know that large fortunes quickly 
made are not honestly made — that they are made by step- 
ping on other people — that the money is unclean. 



LoF 



100 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

Nevertheless, the appHed philosophy of the times is bor- 
rowed from the polemics of lago, whose creed is familiar 
to the world: 

'Tut money in thy purse; honestly, if thou canst, but put 
money in thy purse." 

Now, if ill-gotten wealth debased only its procurer, the 
world might still wag on indifferently well. But no, hard 
upon the hour when stealth is no longer necessary, and, 
therefore, cast ofT, effrontery takes its place and proceeds 
to employ all sorts of methods of display. Thence ema- 
nates rivalry — wealth against wealth, millionaire against 
millionaire — the reign of the parvenu, fetlocks and all. 

At one house artists are assembled; at another men who 
WTite; at another musicians. Literary people, public men, 
inventors, educators, all sorts of notable people are invited 
under these pretentious roofs. They dare not stay away, for 
not to be mentioned as going with one of these "proper 
sets" is to be "cut dead," to be ruined in professional under- 
takings; to be nobody. Money is dictator, able to reduce 
merit to charlatanry, and to elevate charlatanry into tacit 
merit." 

There is no time for acquiring refinement during the 
years of unscrupulous money-getting, and when it is se- 
cured old age leers viciously ahead, a warning to be in a 
hurry; and so with gluttony and physical passions predomi- 
nant, wealth cries out that these lower appetites be satisfied. 
Forthwith pleasure converts its harps of poetry into instru- 
ments of salacious song; its music into voluptuous strains 
that sway the passions and the feet; its art to nudity of 
female forms, which might with better propriety advertise 
immoral traffic ; its footlight mimicry into plays that revel in 
lust, or whine with lust's disaster. 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. loi 

The time is not far off, if wealth continues to degenerate 
in its taste, when theaters in decent communities will be 
unpatronized by decent people. 

There is small hope of refining the wealth of this coun- 
try. Every day there is less integrity in money-getting. 
A stream thus foul at its source flows foul to where it 
empties. Father is teaching son lago's proposition — covert, 
but understood; yea, more than understood; applied. 

Money-making is the lowest of the intellectual facul- 
ties. Voltaire expressed it none too severely when he said: 
"Why, those little men on the Bourse can make money." 

At a well-known gathering place in this city recently a 
lawyer, discussing with several men of wealth this sub- 
ject, answered their praise of an Eastern multi-millionaire 
as the greatest example of success of this century by say- 
ing: 

"There are thousands of millionaires, and they are 
powerful — so powerful, so harmful that soon the law must 
take hold of them. You call it a great age — have you a 
Shakespeare, a Homer, a Dante, a Milton? Those four 
men saved the world from the devil; your millionaires 
would give it back to him again." 

That lawyer spoke the truth. 

If honesty among men, virtue among women, and good- 
ness over all, be sovereign of God, that lawyer spoke the 
truth! 



I02 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

3|ol)n Eu0fein» 

IF a great loss fall suddenly, the shock is like a rigor. 
Philosophy is a sure restorative of equanimity in 
thoughtful minds, but the process is slow where the blow is 
sudden and world-reaching in its effect. 

But after the tree is barked, the limbs denuded of their 
leaves, and the trunk rotted by gradual decay, the crash is 
noiseless and does not startle nor confuse the senses. 

When John Ruskin died no planets fell nor panics 
wrought ruin in the market places. In the twilight of a 
London day and the dusk of his long career he fell asleep 
serenely, like the repose that envelops one tired from long 
toil: 

"Night dews fall not more gently to the ground. 
Nor weary, worn-out winds expire so soft." 

Reflection cannot divorce the lives and the characters 
of Ruskin and Tennyson from the personality of our own 
Irving in a sort of unity of being. Irving was drawn into 
the life of New England, but the traditions of old England 
formed the mould of the great romancer of the Catskills. 

They were the last of the Purists and represented the 
best estate of that grand family of letters. It would be 
almost calumny, in considering them, to confound Puritan 
and Purist. Puritan denotes tenacity to fixed standards — 
a new roadway might replace the old, but the Puritan would 
continue to reckon by the unmoved mile posts. 

The Purist moves on occasion, but is careful to measure 
the newer roadway with the precision of a surveyor. He 
is trustworthy, too, for he can both construct and criticise. 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 103 

The spider is an admirable constructor, but cannot in- 
spect his architecture comprehensively; otherwise there 
would be fewer flies to molest man and beast, and more 
to fatten him. He will stretch his web across a doorway, 
where the morning sun causes him to glisten "like a rich 
jewel in an Ethiop's ear," but leaves wholly out of his cal- 
culation the duster of the housegirl, which is applied be- 
times alike to dust and fly and spider, in which, like Lucifer, 
the spider, worse-fated than dust or fly, falls, never to rise 
again. 

John Ruskin revered nature as he found it. Primarily, 
he was a lover of the beautiful. The beautiful addresses 
itself to the eye through the influence of contrast, or, as 
it is plainer spoken, variety. This love of natural objects 
is, in its elementary scope, vicarious, but as it develops it 
becomes discriminative, and, without contracting its sym- 
pathies, asserts its choice. Ruskin found his choice in 
nature, as contradistinguished from human nature. Emer- 
son, on the other hand, was so absorbed with the beauty 
of human ideals that he held no such communion as Rus- 
kin with nature's visible forms, such as William Cullen 
Bryant apotheosized in "Thanatopsis." 

There are two kinds of physicians in literature as in 
physics — one prescribes medicine, internal treatment; the 
other, change of air and scene and contact, external treat- 
ment. Both are capable of benefits. Which is of greater 
value in physiology and literature let him who feels war- 
ranted decide. 

But in literature the external methods of Ruskin have 
this superiority over Emerson's — that companionship with 
the natural world does not generate pessimism, whereas 
contact with the human world does. 



104 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

No system of ethics is valuable if it be visionary. Emer- 
son enchants us with ideals that are. possible only in the 
dream-world of our little lives — ideals that cannot sweeten, 
but essentially embitter the realities to which we are irre- 
deemably apprenticed. 

Ruskin, like Wordsworth, and Burns, and Tennyson, 
sought to lead us beside still waters and green pastures, 
that the beauty and beneficence of nature — its freedom of 
rivalry, of strife, its coveying of birds, its association of 
varied forms of life into mutual sustenance, its ignorance of 
pain, its solitary consciousness of the rapture of exist- 
ence — might take hold of us and teach us contentment, and 
sympathy, and gladness, and universal love. 

Such was the mission of John Ruskin, to which he 
added a lovable character and a transcendent mind. 

The actuating motives of his personal life have been 
thus truly sung in verse: 

"To keep my health! 

To do my work ! 

To live! 

To see to it I grow and gain and give! 

Never to look behind me for an hour! 

To wait in weakness and to walk in power. 

But always fronting forward to the light, 

Always and always facing toward the right. 

Robbed, starved, defeated, fallen, wide astray — 

On, with what strength I have! 

Back to the way." 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 105 



Ci)e Drama of t|)e IBeautiful. 

IN all large communities theaters are mainly supported, 
not by contingent, but by regular patrons. The wealthy 
class and a considerable proportion of the middle class have 
come to depend on the stage for their diversions and their 
entertainment — let the distinction be noted between diver- 
sion and entertainment — and, therefore, the matter of 
amusement should have their thoughtful consideration in 
order that they may obtain the best possible results. Play- 
going in provincial territory proceeds hap-hazard, and not 
indiscriminately. This is the more singular in view of the 
space and impartial surveys furnished by the press for the 
purpose of informing the public as broadly as it can of 
current theatrical affairs. 

It would seem that these efiforts of the press would en- 
courage discrimination, and thereby produce in a measure a 
sort of individual censorship among play-goers. To some 
extent this has unquestionably been done, but not to that 
general extent that establishes a perceptible standard of 
taste among the regular clientele by which managers can 
say with tolerable assurance: "This play will take there, 
this other will not." 

The craze for novelty, for newness, is upon us. 

New things are desirable, but only as they are meri- 
torious. Novelty for novelty's sake is not a sound maxim 
for art, any more than veneration for age's sake is sound 
in art. 

Art is the embodiment of the beautiful — the embodiment 
of the beautiful, and only that. 



io6 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

Not a particle of genuine appreciation exists in raving 
over the work of an old master because it is the work of an 
old master. The mission of art is, not to be venerated, but 
to be admired. And only in so far as art pieces are beau- 
tiful in and of themselves are they truly valuable. It is 
not nature's plan to store away art and, as with wine, im- 
prove it with age. The fact of its resisting age and con- 
tinuing its beauty entitles it to that permanency of esteem, 
that inherent value, which is properly placed upon it. 

But the beauty of life is continued in species rather than 
perpetuated in specific entities. The beauty of the butterfly 
that flits before us on the sunbeams is for us and for the 
hour. Another season there will be other butterflies for 
us, and in seasons beyond our own other butterflies for 
other eyes. So, too, the master painter shifts the canvas 
and the colors and all the lovely imagery of the sky. The 
clouds now dapple in the lofty blue; the rich-hued sunset 
and the succeeding moonbeams of to-night disperse for- 
ever — forever, in turn, to be succeeded by nature's infinite 
variety. 

The spirit of beauty is the breathing of eternity, but its 
visible forms are fleeting as the wind over the sea. Beauty's 
permanency is in its influence. How delicately this is de- 
noted in a song — the voice hushes, the sound subsides, the 
singer disappears; but the heart has been softened by a 
sound, the soul uplifted by a melody that can never die. 

To seek new beauty is eminently wise, and the stage 
can render no finer service than to discover new beauty and 
beautiful influences in human existence. In such a guest 
the drama is art — art in its noblest, its most influential form. 
Instead, therefore, of losing the season in kaleidoscopic 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 107 

novelties, some good, some bad, and most rubbish, let us 
be judicious and discriminate. After awhile the stage would 
be as a beautiful garden, no longer deflowered and defiled 
by ugly growths, if, through a few seasons, play-goers 
would support only the beautiful and avoid the morbid 
and the moribund. 



Cfte ($ooDne0S! of tfie exaorlD* 

SOMEWHERE is recorded this saying by Plato: "The 
two things that fill me with awe are the system of 
stars and the goodness of man." 

In that saying is compassed and contained the grasp and 
the substance of human philosophy. The very words seem 
to burst on the hearing as though one long dumb and over- 
charged with emotion suddenly compressed and uttered in 
a husky sentence the pent-up reverence of a long life of 
rapt and profound contemplation. 

How finely the saying identifies two ideas — and they the 
loftiest possible in human contemplation — into one! The 
stars disclose divinity; the goodness of the world, human- 
ity. Human attributes brought into fellowship with the 
attributes of the everlasting! 

Always the stars are; always human gpodness is — com- 
peers in the dominion of eternity! 

How can any anxious, dejected, oscillating mind be lost 
from the refuge, the serenity, the upholding wisdom of this 
apparent truth, that the order of the universe and the 
goodness of man represent the omniscence and the benefi- 
cence not of an abstract being, but in common of a positive 
and eternal intelligence! 



io8 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

Man has fashioned many gods. He will fashion and 
refashion gods to come Why? Because, in man, his first 
and highest proclivity is worship. With nothing to wor- 
ship, goodness would perish in him, as inevitably as famine 
follows drouth. 

To worship an abstraction is not within human possi- 
biHty. Take the childish idea of Santa Claus— it does not 
even embody reverence, but proceeds from selfishness. 
Santa Claus is a mysterious sort of a person that has a great 
love for children, and goes about mysteriously rewarding 
little children that are sweet and good with gifts, which 
they are grateful to him for, to be sure, but after showing 
them around are put to use without further reflection about 
the giver. He is defective in personality, and passes like a 
shadow. 

Just so with grown people toward the Giver of every 
good and perfect gift — were He as vague and unsubstantial 
as the children's Santa Claus, He would be as mystic, 
ephemeral, and remote from worship. 

Plato could not liken unto himself a god, consequently 
he could not worship. But in clear and noble outline he 
beheld intelligence, power, order, and goodness. These he 
knew could not be the properties of chance, but are essen- 
tially the attributes of effectual purpose. Therefore, the 
identity of that effectual purpose being inscrutable, he was 
withheld from deifying an image before which to bow 
down and worship. So he stood in the presence of the 
Creation, awed into silent, unspeakable reverence. 

Reverence in great, inquisitive minds is a higher form 
of worship than unquestioning belief. It is based on the 
evidence of things existent; not founded on fable or sur- 
mise. 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 109 

All evidence concerning origin, mission, and destiny, 
worthy of consideration, should be weighed rationally. Thus 
was Plato moved to the consideration of human goodness 
as something so fine as to arouse a sense of awe akin to 
tliat inspired by contemplation of the illimitable firmament 
of stars in motion, so vast and orderly that that majestical 
roof to human vision is the embodiment of repose and the 
evidence of eternity. 

Human goodness! Who, of all the millions of millions, 
has not known its joys and sorrows; who not known its 
laughter and tears; who not felt its tender sympathies? Not 
one in all the long, long cycles of the world. No man, 
no woman ever passed from this earth that did not bless 
some creature; by some creature blessed. 

"When Nero perish 'd, by the justest doom 

That ever the destroyer destroyed. 
Some hand, unseen, placed flowers upon his tomb." 

There was never an affliction but there were hearts to 
pity and hands to help. Calamity, famine, pestilence, war — 
all the destructive forces of the world are overcome at last 
by human goodness. 

Goodness is an active property in intelligence; they grow 
together, and lead to wisdom — that wisdom which may not 
see as with physical eyes, but which comprehends, if indeed 
vaguely, yet comprehends with an understanding that can- 
not be otherwise than from on high. 



no THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 



C[)e Larger C!)aritp« 

THERE is one charity that follows distress, and another 
charity that seeks to forestall it. In helpfulness the 
old saying holds good, that "an ounce of prevention is 
worth a pound of cure." But by some contrariety not ex- 
plainable and, indeed, not comprehensible, human assist- 
ance approaches this task of charity backward. 

First the shipwreck, then the succor. Famine first, and 
then belated food. First sickness and irreparable ravage 
and debility, then the physician and the physic. 

If it be an hour of trial, it is undergone alone; no sus- 
taining voice, no hand will help ; then failure and inevitable 
fall, and, after that, such aid as might be welcome to a 
beggar, but unavailing to restore the fallen to where he 
stood. 

Let it be uncertainty that leads a troubled mind to waver- 
ing and indecision; counsel keeps aloof and will not with 
a hint assail the dubious point, but when mistake ensues 
and lodges its penalty, reproaches and compassion join 
together to chafe the fainting spirit into energy again, after 
its finer part has been irremediably marred. 

Men of large fortune, in their infirm years, look about for 
proper places for their charity, not to be applied by them- 
selves, but devised by will and testament, to be effective 
after their deaths — still holding tenaciously, as with a 
miser's grasp, their rich possessions so long as they shall 
live. Such bequests are charitable in a isense — but such a 
sense! Greed holds them to the last, and will not let them 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. iii 

do in life that charity which is half-compulsory in their 
wills. They resign their wealth because they must, and 
in its distribution leave enough for benevolent purposes to 
adorn their memories with the fine dignity of charity. 

How different is that spontaneous benevolence which 
walks the ways of life in health and generosity, by the 
promptings of the heart to benefit the living during the 
benefactor's own days upon the earth. 

Suppose a plot of ground be left barren of plant or 
flower during the holder's life, and his will provided that it 
be planted in shrubs and flowers after his eyes were closed 
alike to barrenness and beauty — who would call him a lover 
of the beautiful? Just so with posthumous charity; it lacks 
the fineness of actual benevolence. 

It is well for the world that there is ever a great sinking 
fund, as it were, that can be drawn on at short notice 
on all occasions of extreme adversity and need. Nothing 
shows finer in our country's history than the ample and 
ready responses that have been made for relief from the 
great calamities that have visited various communities. 
Nor can any other nation show better systems for the relief 
of individual wants than those prevalent with us. No finer 
adornment attaches to the American charity than this ready 
sympathy with those who sufifer and are in need by reason 
of luckless and untoward events. 

The educational features of American charity also stand 
forth pre-eminently fine and far-reaching. 

But material help and educational facilities aside, there is 
still a stupendous question to be answered — are we truly a 
homogenous people? To be so is to exercise the combined 



112 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

virtues of tolerance, forbearance, sincere well-wishing, and 
interdependence— in short, a broad fellowship with our 
kind, in which selfishness is restrained by conscious regard 
for everybody around us. The finest, highest charity of 
which man is capable is charity of judgment, and to this 
should be added liberality of association. 

Lord Bolingbroke once wrote to Swift: "Adieu, dear 
Swift; with all thy faults, I love thee entirely; make an 
effort to love me with all mine." A superb sentiment, with- 
out which there can be no friendship between man and 
man, and no broad-based afifiliation with the society where- 
in we mingle. 

The returns that accrue to a selfish life may be likened 
to the usurer's gains — they bear a taint as of unsavory 
meat, which looks inviting on the dish, but lodges uncom- 
fortably on the assimilative organs. Its pleasures lack the 
flavor of pride, and depend on mere pretense and display, 
which culminate in utter satiety and loneliness. Selfish- 
ness never feels identified with good people and good in- 
terests — a form of isolation unnatural and stolidifying. 

Unselfish lives, on the other hand, find all avenues of en- 
joyment open to them, and even in sacrifice experience a 
sort of exultation. For, mind you, real unselfishness is far 
removed from martyrdom; it walks the earth, not in gloom, 
but in gladness. Its mission is altogether one of joy. It 
says to the happy, be happier yet; and to the unhappy, cast 
oflf the dejection and rejoice likewise. Its words are solace, 
its actions healing, its presence a sustaining joy. Re- 
proaches flee from its hearing, neglect groans in shame, and 
condescension hides its diminished head. It holds commu- 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 113 

nion with onr laughter and with our tears, and in its best 
expression is the incarnation of reHgion, of which some old 
poet wrote: 

" 'This this, my friend, that streaks our morning bright! 
Tis this that gilds the horrors of our night; 
When wealth forsakes us, and when friends are few, 
When friends are faithless, or when foes pursue, 
'Tis this that wards the blow, or stills the smart. 
Disarms affliction, or repels its dart; 
Within the breast bids purest rapture rise, 
Bids smiling Conscience spread her cloudless skies." 



Contentment of (^reat Q^inDs* 

FOR worldly wisdom, commend me to the saying of 
Paul, the apostle: 

"I have learned in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be 
content." 

The content spoken of is not that indifferent acceptance 
of what prevails from time to time, from place to place, 
by which one is disposed to inaction, nor yet a resignation 
to things displeasing to one's better sense; but the content 
of a mind aware of its limitations to understand or to affect 
the natural laws that govern the Universe and cause its con- 
ditions and events. 

Contentment is the state — the reward, if that word be 
preferred — resulting from man's application of the logical 
faculty to his study of the principles of life. 

The highest of all principles is the principle of life, and 
man's supreme faculty of discernment is the faculty of 
logic. 

(8) 



114 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

This statement may be held not only to be an axiom, 
a self-evident truth, but is substantially, convincingly veri- 
fied in the uniform contentment that has signally charac- 
terized all higher minds, remote and present. Further- 
more, the degree of contentment has varied according to 
the strength, the comprehensive capacity of minds — the 
higher up the scale, the greater, the finer being the content. 
We do not sufficiently weigh and consider this prodigious 
fact, and we are thus deprived of the advantages it supplies. 

It cannot be said that this contentment attained by fine 
minds, invariably through solemn and sad thought, has 
the resilient quality of obliterating the anxieties, the per- 
turbations that throng the wayside, by restoring Edenic 
buoyancy of mind and spirit. On the other hand, often 
along the way such minds could but falter over the wail 
of the poet: 

"They mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth — 
The tree of knowledge is not that of life." 

But there comes a time, a stage, when there is no more 
faltering, but, instead, an unwavering, an abiding faith in 
this — that where the finite mind leaves ofif, the infinite con- 
tinues on its course; an upward course, ever clearer in its 
light, more abundant in its beauty, more fruitionary in its 
evolving purposes. 

Man's relative part in this infinity we may not determine, 
and as living mortals we are not to know, nor our success- 
ors, so long as time shall roll. It matters not, therefore, 
what creed we hold or do not hold — they are speculations, 
all. But this truth we know — that man's goodness is fash- 
ioned after higher goodness, his virtues after virtues higher 



THO UGH TS : By Brutus. 1 1 5 

and complete. From the first dawn till now, through the 
vast gloom and vaster radiance of the ages, man has 
walked with tireless feet, aspiring as he climbed, and, climb- 
ing, still aspiring. Why? It is the perseverance of good- 
ness, the assiduous march of the virtues, the subordination 
of evil. 

Who shall behold the survival of the fittest and doubt 
the divine quality, the divine purpose of the creation? Who 
shall contemplate Beauty, and survey its forms, and not 
declare that the great purpose that ordained and consti- 
tuted life and the universe is founded on benignity, and, 
being thus established, cannot be swallowed up in failure, 
nor effectually restrained by degenerate vice? 

"If a man die, shall he live again?" is not for man to 
answer, except as he shall answer through hope that is 
born of love. Nor yet of the creation shall he know aught 
of origin, continuity, or ultimate purpose. Only of that 
origin and purpose he knows, profoundly knows, that they 
are not founded on evil, but on good; that they are sup- 
ported by wisdom and power, and cannot be disastrously 
assailed. 

Further to seek is to wander in darkness, to over-concern 
ourselves about ourselves. Why shall man despair of his 
destiny when he is a part of Nature's system — a system, 
the order and continuity and blessings of which are from 
everlasting to everlasting, and, therefore, divine? 

Let us turn our minds thitherward — to the heights where 
the fineness of our thoughts shall escape despond, and 
broaden beyond ourselves into rich fellowship with univer- 
sal life and its manifold adornments. 



ii6 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

lE)uman £iualitp of l^erDi'$ ^mit. 

NATURE'S finest contribution to man in the comple- 
tion of his senses — his mediums of enjoyment — is the 
love of the beautiful. 

Were he constituted altogether of useful qualities, pleas- 
ure would be unknown to him; life would be void of com- 
pensation; his affections would run to waste. 

Love of the beautiful is a natural element in his endow- 
ment. It is an ultimate instinct and principle of his nature, 
for which no more definite reason can be given than the 
simple disposition of the Deity that he should be so created. 
We receive pleasure from certain colors and from others 
not; so with sound — certain combinations delight us, like 
the scent of the rose; others disturb, displease, like a dis- 
agreeable intrusion. 

Art in all its diversions — painting, sculpture, drama, 
music — is but the ministration of the beautiful for the grati- 
fication of the primary elements of our nature. On these 
elementary principles within us education and accident 
operate to an unlimited extent. According to cultivation 
or neglect, direction or diversion, will be the quality and 
extent of the enjoyments of the several influences of art. 

It is not needful that we, the beneficiaries, should acquire 
the facilities, or even an understanding of the facilities of 
art. 

Does a gardener alone love flowers, and that, too, be- 
cause he studies their nurture and promotes their growth? 
Were all the gardeners dead, would not the wild flowers still 
grow to lure us to the woods? 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 1 1 7 

It is not that we cultivate flowers — you and I, gentle 
reader — which renders them beautiful, but that through 
them we cultivate our love of the beautiful, and thereby 
they give us pleasure proportionately with our appreciation. 
The same is true of music. 

I am subject to the same annoyance as other people, I 
take it, by the discourse of ordinary musicians about the art 
of music. They would have it understood, perforce, that 
people are necessarily deprived of genuine appreciation of 
music who are not educated in the mechanics, or, if they 
v\-ill. the architecture, of music — a silly argument. Wherein 
we should educate ourselves is love of music as a portion 
of the beautiful, not as a contrivance for the production of 
sounds. 

That which should engage us is not the technique of art, 
but the cultivation of our natures into finer degrees of en- 
joyment of the beautiful through whatsoever medium it 
addresses us. 

Have you not paused to hear a robin sing, or a thrush, 
or some bird of the night, and gone on gladdened — reflect- 
ing on the beauty of music, knowing naught, caring naught 
about the construction of that melody, so sweet was the 
melody itself? 

Shall you listen to the skylark's rapture, and inquire of 
some ornithologist the digest of that bird's vocalism? 

Who cares about the dynamics of thunder, that bears in 
its mighty roll the wrath of the elements? 

Shall you inquire aught of the warden when the miserere 
startles the trembling air of the prison? — still less of the 
poor player who follows those voices of despair. 



1 1 8 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

So with the great musician who passed away at Milan — 
Verdi. Above all things, he knew that that music is not 
the greatest which is cherished only by musicians; that 
music to be sublime must be commensurate with the uni- 
versal principles of the beautiful imbedded in human 
nature. 

On this plane he gave his genius to the world — to cor- 
respond with nature, even in her very excellence. 

Love is acute in its enjoyments, as in its agonies. On 
this theme he centralized his genius, the better to sweep 
the whole diapason of human sensibility. He would not 
leave the range of the emotions. 

His judgment in that resolve is unassailable. 

The sea has its owm solemn music. Mountain sings unto 
mountain. The valleys have ever the music of the streams. 
Only the winter's silence breaks the song of birds in the 
dense woods. And from pole to pole, the eternal winds 
celebrate the wonderful harmonies of nature. 

Only man is left to be his own minstrel — yet out of his 
own sad music he has found fellowship with the stars and 
brotherhood with all the children of nature, until their glad- 
ness is his gladness, their beauty his beauty; his, too, their 
transient loveliness, and his, at last, their everlasting calm. 

Through these conceptions Verdi gave to sound richer 
and deeper influences. 

He was to music that which Tennyson was to poetry — the 
last of the masters greatly human. 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 119 



Cl)e Spirit of Eetjerence^ 

WERE happiness a realm, intelligence needs must be 
its light, love its water, and reverence its atmos- 
phere. 

There can be no highly ordered character not nurtured 
by the three — intelligence, reverence, and love. According 
to the intimacy of this trinity in human personality is the 
degree of harmony which the individual enjoys, as related 
to the whole creation, and also the degree of pleasure 
attained by him in his own existence. 

Excess of intellect sometimes forbids love its due propor- 
tion of one's being, and love sometimes obstructs intelli- 
gence. Either way, the disproportion is a costly impedi- 
ment, for which there seems to be no corrective. 

But there is a more general disproportion than that 
cited, and that is the insufficiency of reverence. 

Particularly in this period, when there is going on such 
transformations of ideals, the attribute of reverence is 
under such grave neglect as to be virtually in a state of 
restraint. 

Ample avowments of reverence are made, but are they 
felt by the many? In a way, yes; but it is a vague, theo- 
retical impression closer akin to awe than reverence. Man 
is too deeply conscious of his dependence on the order of 
nature ever to be wholly irreverent. But that fine reverence 
which is worship, which is directly active over our whole 
mental and moral being — that reverence is rare. 

By some reverence is considered a several endowment, 
possessed by one like the ten talents, by another like the 



I20 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

single talent — but specific in degree. But this view cannot 
stand the test of evidence, and is, in a measure, oflfered as 
a condonement of their shortcoming by those delinquent in 
their dues of reverence. 

This we know, that intelligence and reverence help each 
the other. Here is a book-reared man going forth from 
college. Musty tomes, intellectual abstractions possess him 
merely. If reverence be endowed in him, it is still dormant, 
and he goes forth into the natural world a stranger. Like 
one man speaks of another as "knowing him by reputation," 
so the college man knows nature only that way, and as 
yet he may admire, but cannot revere. But as he mingles 
with Nature, and has contact and communion with her 
visible forms, there arises in him something that books can- 
not inspire, and presently he knows that it is reverence. 

He did not bring to that communion a specific spirit ot 
quantity of reverence. He simply communed, and by com- 
muning learned; and learning, felt. 

Distinct from him there is the man native and mature 
in natural surroundings, untutored and simple as shepherds 
who tend their flocks by night. The instruction of books 
has not been his, but stars have addressed him; the brook 
has been his music; beyond the woods the river flows 
sedate and calm, and unconsciously renders him dignified; 
the Sabbath day dawns differently on his senses from the 
other days, and he climbs to the mountain top, not knowing 
why, ignorant that it is a sense of exaltation; he feeds his 
stock more plentifully that day, and walks forth among 
them, and surveys his fields, and here and there plucks from 
his trees a broken limb and pauses to follow a robin's flight, 
and thrills at its note — every emotion an act of worship, 
every thought the voice of reverence. 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 121 

Here, then, the two commune — the scholar and the sim- 
ple man. And Nature blesses both — as she blesses every 
creature whose thoughts are hers, whose hearts take kindly 
to her beneficence. 



Cl)e lvalue of (S^ooD Inttnti^m* 

YOUTHS in Christian lands are adjured to begin each 
day's life with utterance of the Lord's Prayer, that it 
may be a help to them in resistance of temptation and in 
the control of their conduct in conformity with His will, to 
whom is due all goodness, all wisdom, all strength of char- 
acter, whereby the world is saved unto goodness, and wick- 
edness is restrained from overrunning the earth. 

But there comes a time when youths become men, and 
relinquish their early admonitions to the instructors who 
are to admonish the children of these erstwhile youths. 

Proud of entrance into man's estate, they put away the 
counsels received in the days of their youth, as though 
those precepts were fulfilled of their purpose, and lapsed 
by limitation where manhood begins. 

Thus is lost much of the efficacy of those beneficent 
teachings which, instead of lapsing at that juncture, should 
hold their best functions in readiness for the transition from 
the boyish prologue into the serious drama of maturity. 

It is not so much to govern the period of youth that 
these counsels are taught, but that through this period 
the mind and the character may be so inclined to goodness 
that when the days of manhood shall be upon them they 
be guided on the advanced way by the safe, unerring com- 
pass of their early instructions. 



122 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

In the days of their youth these wholesome precepts, 
these right incHnings, are of the very nature and essence 
of truth, put in control of their training and not to be 
dropped at maturity, but at maturity to be comprehended 
as a map showing right lines of action, to be pursued all the 
days of their lives. 

It is not wisdom, therefore, in him who passes the 
threshold where youth leaves oflf and manhood commences, 
to declare: "Here do I part with youthful knowl^edge, 
praying that it may in like measure and benefit accrue to 
the children that may bless me; the while I go forward 
into the larger life to learn instruction from experience, 
and to direct my conduct according to the requirements of 
circumstances, purpose, and accident." 

The dignity, the fancied importance of this assump- 
tion, this declaration may proceed from good intentions, 
but just there, even at the outset, those intentions are be- 
clouded with ignorance, lack of the light of positive and 
pronounced principles. 

He that forswears, he that abandons his reliance in youth- 
ful precept, lays himself bare to the winds of circumstance, 
and, without further resolution, is no more than as a pipe 
for fortune's finger to sound what stops she pleases. 

As to the vaunted dignity of such self-reliance, it is no 
more to be esteemed than is the audacity of a notoriety- 
seeking swimmer posing to plunge into the falls of Niagara, 
thinking by his presumptuous prowess to appear superior 
to the fury of that cataract. 

As between the dignity, the self-reliance of the man 
who goes out into each day's afifairs without a thought, 
an intention, an inward supplication as to his conduct, and 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 123 

the dignity of the man who has so fostered good intentions 
that they are habitual in his daily walk — as between the two 
men, the former represents, if the anachronism be allowed, 
the dignity of chance; the latter, the dignity of purpose. 

It may be asked here: Is not this distinction less in the 
actual valuation of character than is made to appear, inas- 
much as the former may be disposed to right conduct by 
instinct, and the latter by resolution? 

I answer that my assertion assumes good and evil capa- 
bilities in both men, such being the mingled yarn of 
man's nature. Goodness is an instinct in both, but so is 
evil. I hold, therefore, that the man fortified and guided 
by liabitual good intentions is safer from the commission of 
wrong than the man not constantly guarded against the 
impulses of the passions. 

But there is even a more salutary virtue in good inten- 
tions than the foregoing distinction indicates. Lack of res- 
olution leaves one passive to chance; he may avoid evil, 
but at the same time omit good; whereas good intentions 
are not only disposed to activity in avoidance of evil, but 
also to activity in the accomplishment of good. 

To say to one's wife at the close of a day, "I have done 
no wrong," is not nearly the gratification it is to say, 'T 
have been active to-day; I avoided temptation and did a 
kindness." 

Socrates attributed what the world was pleased to call 
his goodness to the habitual good intentions which were 
inculcated in him in his youth, and which he preserved 
and put into effect throughout his life. 

This great philosopher, on the day of his execution, a 
little before he drank hemlock and met the night of death 



124 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

"as tranquil as a star meets morning," entertaining his 
friends with a discourse on the soul, spoke these words: 
"Whether or no God will approve of my actions, I know 
not; but this I am sure of — that I have at all times made 
it my endeavor to please Him, and I have a good hope that 
this, my endeavor, will be accepted by Him." 

Are there any words simpler than those, or any words 
sublimer? 

Would God reject such a man? No more, my readers, 
than He would revile virtue or cast out goodness. 

Then let us a little imitate that good man. It will elevate 
us in this life, and render us at least worthier of immortality. 



PREVALENT among people of ordinary education 
there is a belief that learning renders a person grave, 
unsociable, supercilious, reticent, or afifected — in short, 
disagreeable. 

Many times I have observed, as surely as my readers 
must have similarly observed, upon the entrance of one 
considered a scholar into a casual assemblage of average 
men, the conversation slackens and even comes to a stop 
with an abruptness like that in the motion of a fast-going 
train when the engineer suddenly sees an obstruction on 
the track and applies the air brakes. 

Further to employ the illustration, if the gathering be of 
untutored people, the entrance of the man of learning 
causes commotion and personal confusion similar to the 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 125 

activity of a crew on a freight train when,, from the lack of 
air brakes, they respond to the whistle for down brakes by 
hand. 

Perhaps the assembly had been indulging in anecdotes; 
then the approach of the wise man leads the talk to politics, 
or other current serious topics, concerning which they may 
be indifferently informed, and, therefore, incapacitated to 
discuss it; nevertheless, it represents them as serious- 
minded, which must command his esteem, whereas to re- 
main natural, at ease and interested in the themes thus 
suspended, would, they apprehend, subject them measura- 
bly to his contempt. 

There is another large element in the world's democracy 
which is very differently agitated by the presence of a 
scholarly person, namely, those not sufficiently unbenighted 
to be aware of their limitations — which class almost inva- 
riably is consorted with by a class still diflFerent, yet of nat- 
ural affiliation with them, namely, those of a little, very little 
reading, who are at once garrulous and voluble of speech; 
men seeking the wholly unread as rapt auditors of their 
villainous compounds of speech. 

An aggregation of this mixture really despises a man of 
learning, and such slight deference as he may receive at 
their hands changes to contumely as soon as he leaves 
them. "What does that old book-worm, with his sour 
looks, know; who cares for what he thinks?" is about as 
mild a reproof of his accomplishments as he may hope for 
at such hands. 

Ascending the social and the mental scales, the observer 
will be well toward the top before he finds the scholar in 
congenial atmosphere. He will have passed "the exclusive 



126 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

set," their imitators and worshipers; the pseudo-Hterati, and 
all the empiric "sets" of culture much below the rarified air 
of genuine learning, ere yet he discovers the man of lore 
at home and at ease in the small but peerless republic of 
letters. 

If one were to undertake to account for this virtual dis- 
placement of the man of learning from agreeability in the 
common walks of life, he would have many contributing 
causes to expound, which could not be even designated in 
an article of this space; and, try as he might to exempt 
scholars in general from the charge of being disagreeable 
to the rank and file, so to speak, he would fail in the exemp- 
tion, because, from no desire on the part of learned people, 
they do, wittingly or unwittingly, conduct their speech out 
of favor with the generality of men. In some, this is 
produced by an honorable but undiscerned manner of re- 
serve; in others, by desire of impressiveness; in others, by 
alTectation of superiority. 

It should be said in a general view of scholars, outside 
the propriety of approval or of censure, that the very act of 
learning lifts a man out of commonplace paths and conse- 
quently apart from the familiarity of ordinary contact. He 
would have to relinquish the natural and proper dignity 
which inheres in cultivation, to be hail fellow with the mob. 
This he will not do, no more than a gentleman of elegance 
would abuse himself to be inelegant with a rabble. 

Now, I desire, without appearing to embarrass the gen- 
eral attitude of scholars, to indicate a distinction as be- 
tween men of culture and men of thought. 

It will be seen from this statement that I discriminate 
between men who, by cultivation, acquire other men's 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 1 2 7 

thoughts, and men who acquire their own thoughts. Both 
are admirable and unsparable — the reader and the thinker; 
one is an agent and the other a producer. An agent is 
essentially subordinate, and, although he be possessed, 
through his cultivation, of finer material than the man of 
thought, whose capability of mind may be less than that of 
the minds which instructed the man of cultivation, still the 
fact of subordination of agency should serve as a restraint 
from excessive pride, and certainly from arrogance, aus- 
terity, solemnity, condescension, and the like vanities; for 
to be proud, exhibitory, or sullen over the acquirement of 
other men's thoughts is more to be spurned than the in- 
tended imposture of a man without means disporting his 
family in the borrowed equipage of wealthy friends as 
though it were his own, and magnifying his folly by vul- 
garity of mannerisms notably foreign to the gentleman who 
did the lending. 

I sometimes think there would be a wider spread of 
culture among men if less ado were made by those pro- 
fessing it. There are scholars who render learning attract- 
ive to others as something to pursue. On the other hand, 
there are many men of culture who deter it in others; they 
render it forbidding, and represent it as difficult and impos- 
sible without infinite preparation. 

There are branches of learning so technical that this 
is true of them. But it is not true of that great learning 
which should, out of the highest considerations, and by 
rights the most important, be the common property of 
the world — I mean that learning which makes for the better- 
ment of mankind. 



128 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

There is no single fact more valuable to our informa- 
tion than the simple and sublime truth that all the great 
minds in all the ages were rooted in simplicity, and all their 
imperishable writings are characterized by simplicity of 
language. 

The second fact most valuable to know is that the world's 
finest minds were of rock-ribbed sincerity. No man sin- 
cere can be misunderstood. It were as impossible to con- 
fuse the temper of fine steel as not to understand sincerity. 
Sincerity makes itself known as feelingly as the forces of 
nature make themselves felt for what they are. 

Wise men since time began have thought according to 
their lights, and written according to their thoughts. Thus 
will others think and write till time shall be no more. To 
believe this is to be tranquil about the present and the 
future, for the light increases with the ages through the 
integrity of the human mind, an integrity as incorruptible 
as the stars, and, as the stars, serene. 



among tfte DeaD %tiitt%. 

THE Christmas holidays had come and gone, and the 
world had resumed its customary course. The avenue 
from the White House to the Capitol was filled with the 
usual throngs which enliven that thoroughfare when both 
the social season and the session of Congress are at their 
height. 

But one in a strange city soon wearies of throngs, no 
matter how brilliant they may be. They lose their novelty 
quickly, and after that one feels the more jaded the more 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 129 

he sees of them, just as he does when he has seen enough 
of a long procession or a three-ring circus. 

There is much of Hvely interest to be seen in the National 
Capital on the first visit, but very little afterward. Follow- 
ing the holiday season alluded to, I was in Washington with 
an idle afternoon on my hands. The weather was too cold 
for a ride on the street cars, and there were no automobiles. 
It was gloomy and oppressive in the steam-heated rooms of 
the hotel, but where to go? Where had I not been? 
Presently I thought of the Dead Letter OfBce. I had never 
been there. 

I shuddered a little as I recalled the gruesomeness that 
the name of that office suggested to my fancy in youth. 
In some ways in those early days I associated it with the 
dead — letters for or from the departed. I could not under- 
stand just what sort of a morgue it was, but morgue was 
enough, and I shivered at the thought — not so foolish a 
fancy, after all, as many a grown person who has been 
through that department will testify. 

Nevertheless, on this occasion I accounted the admoni- 
tory dread of childhood as a dead letter, and, after a brisk 
walk, stood in the department. 

The chief clerk was a Tennessean, and he left nothing to 
be desired in the way of a thorough inspection of the de- 
partment. 

"We are busy with the dead mail of the Christmas sea- 
son," he said, "and I am sure you will find much to en- 
tertain you." 

So I did, but if I go there again it will be when they are 
handling the mail for St. Valentine's Day or that of All 
Fools' Day. 

(9) 



I30 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

The third letter I saw opened contained a bunch of 
pressed, fresh violets, as dainty in odor as the refined tracery 
of the lines on the feminine note paper: "Mother, I kiss 
these for you. Ellen." Poor violets, deprived of their 
mission; poor mother, to whom the day was empty; what a 
precious message to miss the harbor of her heart! 

Another letter read:. "Dear Brother Jim — Laura had so 
counted on your being with us Christmas. I am sure it has 
been the hope of seeing you again, more than the medi- 
cine, has kept her alive. She keeps the baby with her con- 
stantly, and tries so hard to get him to call your name. 
I'm sure you could help her to teach him. Do come if 
there is any possible way. Send a telegram if you can 
come. It will make Laura so happy. Your sister." 

I remember seeing opened a package with a smoking 
jacket in it, and this portion of the letter enclosed: "It is 
so beautifully made I am afraid you will think it was 
bought in a store. But don't you believe it. No matter 
who cut it out, grandma sewed every stitch in it. She 
embroidered the initials under the collar, too. She says to 
tell you if you will promise to come home next Christmas, 
she'll knit you a pair of seal brown slippers." 

If I were a postmaster I would hate to see a package like 
that go to the Dead Letter Office, for the old grandmother's 
sake. 

What is to be thought of sweethearts who spring their 
petty jealousies at Christmas tide? Here is one of the let- 
ters I saw opened: "Esteemed Mr. Rollins: I have to- 
day sent by express to my brother in the army a pair of 
crocheted slippers with your initial across the toes. I am 
sure they will be of better service worn by a soldier in 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 1 3 1 

battle for his country than by a fascinating painter whose 
rooms are besieged daily by wealthy girls, who go there 
to adore you and not to admire your daubs. What do 
I care how many pictures you sent to the loan exhibit? I 
wager anything you please that you volunteered to send 
them. Or do they charge unknown artists according to 
space? If I claimed to be a man and wanted to do any 
volunteering, I'd volunteer like Richard Richards did — 
under my country's flag. I am glad I sent him the slip- 
pers. I suppose you will take Christmas dinner with at 
least a dozen of your infatuees. I am to give Tom Eldridge 
his answer Christmas afternoon. You can address me in 
his care after Christmas, although I presume you will hear 
from him himself on the subject. Allow me to sign myself 
your friend and well-wisher, Dellavine Songster." 

It is an ill wind that blows nobody good. The Dead Let- 
ter Office sometimes is the receptacle of letters better lost 
than delivered, as one of these Christmas missives proves. 
It was addressed presumably to a traveling man who was 
carrying on a clandestine correspondence with an unsophis- 
ticated school girl in a boarding school in Pennsylvania, 
the proposed rendezvous boding anything but good to her. 
It read: "My Dearest Jack: I have the old folks at home 
completely fooled. They believe I am too sick to spend 
Christmas with them. So you see it will be the easiest 
tiling in the world for me to accept your delightful invita- 
tion, which I do with all my heart. So I shall see Phila- 
delphia at last, and, best of all, I shall be with you. It 
seems dreadfully imprudent, but oh, I must see you again. 
1 don't know which train I shall take, but no matter, I 
shall drive directly to the blank hotel, and you are to come 



132 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

at seven o'clock and dine with me. Don't forget the hour, 
as I shall be in despair if you are tardy a single moment. 
Genevieve." 

Thus letter after letter, missing its goal, still helped to 
form an epitome of life as it is through glad seasons and 
sad seasons, and to reveal the human heart in its best love, 
and its worst. 



WOMEN do three-fourths of the world's loving. And 
they will never cease being wretched until they learn 
to love less. Nevertheless, women would fare better if 
they would love more wisely. No man is expected to un- 
derstand a woman, but it would be greatly to their peace of 
mind and to domestic contentment if women would oftener 
unite their amiability and their unhasty judgment in study 
of the genus homo, as indicated in his conduct. 

Not many men act from impulse; there is generally pur- 
pose and plan in what they do. But impetuous action 
is traceable to a definite cause, if the seeker be patient to 
pursue it. 

Owen Meredith denoted a radical defect in the relation- 
ship of the sexes in the hackneyed lines: 

"Man's love is of man's life a thing, a part; 'tis woman's 
whole existence." 

Whether the disparity be a fault of nature, or be due 
to the occupation of men and the idleness of women, is a 
problem too long and difificult of solution here. Only it 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 1 3 3 

may be cited that at summer watering places, at the sea- 
shore, on long journeys, or wherever the sexes are thrown 
together for any considerable period, men are more ardent 
in their devotion than women are. In such surroundings, 
no matter how genuine and deep a woman's love for a 
man may be, she is just naturally disposed and constrained 
to flirt, at least a little — not cruelly nor wantonly, but — 
fliri. Ofttimes she has no other motive than to torment 
her lover into a brief frenzy of jealousy, and I have never 
yet known a case of true love in which the woman failed 
in this tantalizing undertaking. 

Where the man undertakes it, he always fails. Get a 
man in love sure enough and he would proclaim it from, 
tlie house-tops if she would allow him. Figuratively, he 
does this anyhow. 

The usual standpoint from which a woman judges men 
is that, were she a man, with all his boundless opportuni- 
ties, she would be a figure in the world — would do some- 
thing, amount to something. Of course this is a delusion, 
a belief that would not materialize. Anyway, that's the 
way she feels about it, and that is the point of view from 
which she sees him. 

Now and then a squire's wife sees in him such a Judge 
as a Justice of the Supreme Court would be proud to be. 
And other ordinary men in other callings succeed in ex- 
alting themselves, at times, in the estimation of women. 
But, as a general proposition, men fall short of what 
women think they ought to be. More particularly, in re- 
gard to men's conduct, however, are women censorious. 
For instance, no woman will ever understand why men 
join clubs or go to other places where men congregate. The 



134 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

simple tmth is that men not only like, but require, at least, 
some association with men. 

Without the slightest reflection on the charm of women's 
society, men like to be together. 

There are a thousand and one things in common between 
them that are not in common between men and women. 
And if there is anything in the world that a man likes, it is 
to talk. He talks too much, to speak truly, and neither 
he nor anybody else remembers what he said — but he has 
enjoyed the glorious privilege of talking. 

I look for only a tempest of wrath on my pen name from 
the indignant women who will construe this as encour- 
aging men to meet and stay away from home and talk 
But the truth should be told though the heavens fall. I 
don't justify this talking mania, but simply state that it is 
a mania — and incurable, at that. Instead of justifying, I 
am in favor of a curfew law, especially for married men — 
and it should be rung close about sunset. 

A man is a slave at his work — why not make him a 
prisoner at home? What right has a man of family to re- 
fresh himself at a play or an opera, or inform himself at a 
lecture or a political meeting? A bee-line from his work 
to his home — that's good enough for him; and he should 
be "precious glad" to have a home to go to. Let's have 
that curfew. 

Really, though, I know one man, who is typical of many, 
and there is no telling what ought to be done with him. 
Just he and his wife are left of the family. They are thor- 
oughly devoted, and are no longer young. His desire was 
to buy a little home and live to themselves, instead of board- 
ing at a public place, as at present. He believed that it 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 135 

would draw them closer and more tenderly together. But 
his duties are at irregular hours, and he has frequently to 
be out an hour or two at night. With all his devotion, he 
never thought of the hours of unsuflferable loneliness and 
lack of protection to which he was inviting her. 

Happiness is not for many of earth's poor children — but 
in the name of all that is good, all that is holy, all that helps 
us to bear our burdens, even unto the grave, why is it 
that through neglect, through lack of a little considera- 
tion, men force wretchedness upon top of wretchedness on 
the hearts of women, who, through it all, are still mur- 
murless and mute. 



(^tnim anD O^attimonp* 

GENIUS and matrimony have been known to flourish 
well together. But much oftener they have proved 
to be incompatible. 

The married life of Mr. and Mrs. Browning verged close 
to happiness, under the constant enticements of congenial 
temperaments and tastes, although I question the mental 
helpfulness of either to the other. Indeed, one may trace 
the mental influences that have potently afifected the emi- 
nent people of art and literature, and it will be found that 
those influences were derived from the past and not from 
contemporary sources. 

It is quite possible to enjoy that which pleases, but does 
not profit. Take the coterie of Byron and Shelley, and 
Moore and Keats — each was a delight to the others, yet 
each followed his own bent, sowing his own field and 
reaping his ow'n harvest. 



136 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

Of all the faculties of man, the mind is most consistent 
on its distinctness from other loving minds. It just simply 
will not work double either in training or in application. It 
should in no wise be denied that bonds of intellectual sym- 
pathy exist between living minds. But sympathy is 
not helpfulness in the actual meaning of the word — it is 
nothing more than appreciation, just as many a statesman 
applauds a speech which he could not help to construct. 
Every brain has its peculiar fitness, and its own chart and 
compass and pilotage. It may speak other minds along the 
course and learn the rocks and the havens of other voy- 
agers — but still the sea is wide, the winds uncertain, and 
each brain must bend to its own masts. 

But leaving similitude, the question of genius and mat- 
rimony has perplexing phases. I heard the issue warmly 
contended recently, by members of both sexes, whether 
a gifted woman had naturally a right to discard her art 
when its best usefulness was still ahead, and bind her life 
to domestic use. 

In English social life it is an old and accepted maxim that 
rank imposes obligation. One of the disputants held that 
with such a precedent upheld in the comparatively imma- 
terial ethics of social functions, it should apply with im- 
measurably greater force in the world of art. 

"Then you would have a cloister and immune within it 
the gifted women of the world, and famish their hearts in 
order that some hundreds, or thousands, might gaze raptur- 
ously for five mmutes on a landscape or a madonna painted 
by some creature, to you unknown, who mixes the oils of 
the canvas with the tears of a desolate heart. Or you would 
restrain a mother's lullaby over her child that a curious, or 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 137 

say an admiring, audience might applaud a song "whose 
influence dies with its echo" — this from a young woman 
who rocks a cradle and knows whereof she speaks, so far as 
the lullaby bears on the case. 

"Men monopolize the faculty of imagination," said 
another woman in the party, "whereby they discern with- 
out the help of experience, the beautiful and the true, 
whereas m the simplicity of her nature woman can only 
reach this discernment as it is disclosed through her emo- 
tions and her experiences." 

I recall a similar argument by Ouida in an article on 
Mary Anderson, several years prior to the great actress' 
marriage. "Miss Anderson," said she, "is too young to play 
Juliet. She should wait until she has married and been 
blessed with a child, and develop her nature to its widest 
scope — then she can understand and portray love." 

All this has since been hers. But whether she will return 
to the footlights and verify the argument of her critic can 
only be guessed at. 

One thing is highly probable, namely, that notwithstand- 
ing the regret, and even resentment, which her marriage 
and retirement caused play-goers in this country and 
England, were she to leave the matter of returning to the 
stage to a vote by her former devotees, almost all would 
vote, "Don't." Remain in your beautiful country home 
with love and happiness. 

Such a vote would have a potent bearing on the question 
whether a genius has a right to forswear art for domestic 
life. 

I recently heard an unmarried woman declare that, in her 
opinion, Mary Anderson left the stage and married out 



1 3 8 THO UGH TS : By Brutus. 

of sheer perversity toward the public, just to tantalize 
them, because she knew that everybody was crazy to see 
her, and because she also knew that everybody was mad 
enough to choke the handsome Count for trying to steal 
her from the stage. I would like very much to know 
what our ex-Mary would have to say about that view of 
her. 

I am afraid this caustic critic is rather selfish in desiring 
the great actress to continue the portrayal of the imagi- 
nary happiness of other women for the entertainment of 
an audience, and forego a life of genuine happiness herself. 

Nevertheless, I am reluctant to surrender the argument 
at this point in favor of a woman sacrificing art for love. 
T confess I can see nothing else for a woman to do but 
yield to it when love takes possession of her. But it must 
be an ardent and well-placed devotion to sustain such a 
bitter sacrifice of the art spirit. There is something inex- 
pressibly precious in the exercise of genius, in the evidences 
of its power to sway the emotions, the senses, and the minds 
of men. 

No music is half so sweet to a triumphant singer as the 
applause that follows her song, and no unearned royal 
wreath ever thrilled a circumstantial queen with such joy 
as starts a tumult in the heart and mantles the veins in 
purple and crimson of the divinely gifted artist as she 
stands facing a whirlwind of flowers from hands as dainty 
and bejeweled as her own. 

Bold, indeed, is the man who can say to such an one: 
Relinquish these triumphs and this ecstasy. Come and be 
with me, and in silence and obscurity let us pursue the 
ordinary and the commonplace. Let genius die, that love 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 139 

may take its place, and I, your idol, exclude you from a 
continent of lovers. 

But why do not artists marry artists? And if they give 
up their public careers, can they not, at least, commune 
in spirit, and bring their gifts into happy accord in their 
private lives? This is sometimes done, and a very pleasant 
existence results. But here again the rule works the con- 
trary w^ay. Highly gifted persons are but rarely blessed 
with normal temperaments or regular composure. They 
are prone to be erratic, and, in many cases, in ways exas- 
perating and intolerable. Often nothing so provokes them 
as the presence and talk of others ; they must be alone, or, 
if they have to endure the presence of anybody, let him or 
her be anything but of the same craft. 

Generally they take suggestions as one would take a coal 
of fire in his hand, and they listen to opinions and com- 
ments as one listens to the voice of a donkey. They are 
not altogether censurable for this — it is hard to constrain 
a highly nervous temperament to constant amiability. 
Where the mind is vitally focused and fascinated to a single 
gift, all other things irritate it. It is out of this white 
heat of genius that all great art is forged. And when this 
concentration is disturbed, power relaxes. 

Ordinary mortals are barred from serving two masters — 
how can art and matrimony lay equal hold upon a votary? 

The alternative is distressful, no matter which the choice. 
But a woman's heart is yielding, and a man's persistency, 
hereafter, as before, when they truly love, why — art can 
"go to Jericho." 



140 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 



30 to (Genius. 

A CORRESPONDENT asks an expression of opinion 
as to whether genius is a particular cultivation by 
nature, receiving its constant care and developed by some 
occult and regular method, or whether it is of spasmodic 
growth from the seeds of knowledge originally sown in 
the mind of man and left to germinate, to decay, or to 
be scattered aimlessly about, as a father leaves property to 
his son, which turns to good or bad account according to 
the filial disposition or the influences surrounding him. 

This correspondent opens a subject on which the intel- 
lectual world has been divided from the beginning, with 
an excellent chance of being similarly apart when thought 
merges into the infinite. 

It is a subject hardly desirable for discussion, unless one 
be content merely with idle speculation, utterly non-con- 
clusive, except as they may lead to this or that inference, 
not finally or decisive. 

A rational dictum would seem to be that wisdom, like 
m.atter, is indestructible. 

We are sufficiently acquainted with antiquity, however, 
to know that the same wisdom does not perpetually abide 
in one house, nor in one nation. 

What is not determinable is, whether it comes and goes, 
like the ebb and flow of the tide; or whether it is like the 
course of a river, traversing long distances to reach the 
sea, where it is gathered up by the sun and redistributed 
through a ceaseless process; or whether it has the irregular 
process by which inland lakes and pools are formed without 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 141 ■ 

specific design, but as the result of the co-operation of nat- 
ural laws which happen to converge. It may be denied 
that natural laws "happen" to do anything, and, in them- 
selves, they must essentially consist, else they would not 
be laws. But in the vast code of nature distinct laws may, 
by contact, develop results not definitely designed. 

The refraction of light, by which the rainbow is made, 
is the result of chance-contact of natural laws. 

The human world is controlled by laws closely allied 
to physical regulations, and its phenomena can be traced 
in physical parallels. 

Account for a rhododendron bush isolated on a lonely 
mountain top, with not another of its kind within a reason- 
able radius in the same reach of mountains, and you have 
accounted for a Stevenson with no Thackeray in sight. 

In some way the wind, perhaps, picked up and brought, 
and then picked up again a rhododendron seed, till it found 
lodgment amid the clififs and grew to bush and flower. 

Does not genius propagate in similar way? The proper- 
ties of mind takes substance in the thought produced, and 
this product is scattered through the intellectual world, 
after the method of the flower seed, lodging here and there 
on soil not fertile to its germination, but finding lodgment 
at last in fructifying soil, to grow dwarfed or developed 
according to its sustenance. 

Thackeray's mind had no claim to self-creation; it was 
the product of other minds — a kinship having no physical 
basis. In other words, genius didn't run in the family 
named Thackeray. 

Mind has its own distinct family, and in the case of 
Thackeray, the first of romancers, Stevenson became the 
next of kin. 



142 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

Nobody can account for Burns, but his was a soil ripe 
for poetry, and in some way good seed fell upon it and 
ripened. From this view it is an error to call Burns a genius. 
He didn't go out in search of the muse and filch from her 
the secrets of poetry. Other minds made their impact on 
his and found fertility. 

Without Shakespeare, Byron would probably have been 
much less than Byron. As to Shakespeare, we return to a 
comprehensive mind, identified with all that is known in 
and of the universe. 

There must be original agencies for the accumulation 
and dissemination of wisdom and knowledge. Shakespeare 
was the chiefest of these agencies, having a wider latitude 
than any mind of which there is record. Whether he was 
a genius or a depository, let those say who can. 

This much appears certain — mind impregnates mind. 
Whether the process is based on method, according to the 
desirable development of mankind, or whether after in- 
scrutable whims, like that which bears the flower seed to 
unexpected places, cannot be answered here. Our limit 
of knowledge concerning it is that, no matter what its 
course, wisdom will not perish from the earth. 



l^ome Life anD lE)appine$i8!. 

THE nearest approximation to genuine happiness in this 
life is in a congenial home life. 
This congeniality is not nearly so prevalent, however, as 
it is supposed to be. Social pleasure, intellectual compan- 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 143 

ionship, mental appreciation and enjoyment, pleasant little 
confidences and invariable amiability — these integrals of 
home life are often lacking. 

If the charms of these conditions were better known, they 
would prevail in larger degree and wider extent. There 
are bits of home life which it is delightful to contemplate. 

Not that they could be called "model," for they are better 
than that. "Model" is a very uninviting word anyway; it 
suggests restraints, artificialities, lack of naturalness, ab- 
sence of affability, and a lot of other disagreeable things. 
Such homes are not truly happy. 

In the correct usage of the word happy, intelligence is 
primarily and essentially predicated. Often one hears it 
said that negroes are the only happy people. Greater folly 
was never spoken. As a race, the negro cannot be happy; 
he lacks intelligence and high appreciation. He is capa- 
ble of enjoyment, but not of happiness. 

Ignorance, regardless of race and condition, is an effect- 
ual bar to happiness, for it knows nothing of higher en- 
joyment. The heart's content is called happiness. It is not; 
often it is mere stupidity. Suppose one be content to live 
in ignorance, away from the sins and the joys, the smarts 
and the charms, the pleasure and woe of the world, suffer- 
ing no pain and counting no disappointment, lacking 
neither food nor shelter, nor raiment, nor the physical 
pleasures of existence; is this happiness? By no means; 
it is the contentment of animals. Happiness is relative to 
desire, to capacity, to development. 

There are those who argue that the man fond of raising 
hogs realized as much enjoyment from it as the man who in 
the study masters the minds of other men. It is not so. 



144 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

Happiness is at a lofty attitude; contentment is measured 
by a hill, if not by the level of the plain. It is a wise 
provision of nature that the driver on the box enjoys the 
drive and doesn't sulk at his inferiority to those in the 
carriage. 

To be content with one's state, in so far as it cannot be 
improved, is a fortunate reconciliation with nature's plans — 
plans, however, which yield interest according to the sum 
of the principle invested 

Take Chauncey Depew, a man who has his mind to 
splendid development, capable of dealing with the grave, 
large affairs of life, and possessed of the wisdom of wise 
men, and capable, also, of enjoying all the pleasurable things 
which nature and art and culture and travel have in store 
for those who attain to high development — would you liken 
his pleasures, his degrees of enjoyment to those of the 
uncouth mountaineer? 

Having equipped one's self for the conditions of happi- 
ness, the realization ensues that it cannot be indulged alone; 
one must have companionship, close and constant, and 
something nearer, dearer than companionship — love. 

There cannot be any happiness without love; be sure of 
that. There never lived a creature since the first garden 
who didn't seek to be all in all to somebody, and desire 
somebody to be all in all to him. That is the supreme 
love, the capstone of the human structure. It is the source 
of families, and out of that crowning love springs the affec- 
tion which binds indissolubly one member of the household 
to another, and each to all. 

The happiness of home life is in proportion to the degree 
of congeniality developed and the extent of the intellectual 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 145 

requirements in the family. Many accessory agencies of 
happiness supply the complement to these cardinal require- 
ments. They are of spontaneous growth and not subject 
to rules of cultivation. 



facial atiu$e$* 

THIS is a remarkable country for the development of 
self-importance. In older nations, where class dis- 
tinctions through the course of centuries have established 
well-defined valuations of individuality, self-importance at- 
tains neither in extent nor degree the hold which it exerts 
in America. 

Mr. Depew does not greatly surpass in conscious, intel- 
ligent importance, in his own esteem, the valuation which 
a tramp puts upon himself. If the tramp happens to be 
killed while stealing a ride on the trucks, his next of kin 
may accept something like $35 or $50 as an equivalent for 
his life, but the tramp himself would insist on a valuation 
equal to Mr. Depew's or anybody else's. He might advise 
the acceptance of $35, but would maintain the principle of 
equality in individual value. 

If you question the imaginary importance which is 
characteristic of people at large concerning themselves, 
just you fail to remember a person to whom you were pre- 
viously introduced, no matter how casually, he or she will 
not at a second meeting bear in mind that the first intro- 
duction was required by circumstances, perhaps, and was 
not intended to carry any future social obligation; but nine 
of ten, at the second introduction, will make some reference 

(10) 



146 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

to the first, and five of ten will mention it in the light of a 
grievance that a second introduction should be necessary. 

If there is one form of impoliteness more vulgar than 
ajiother it is in claiming an acquaintance which the other 
party, intentionally or unintentionally, fails to recall, unless 
there followed the formal acquaintance pleasant incidents, 
which justify the belief that it would be agreeable to the 
other party to recall them. 

But this way of acknowledging an introduction by saying 
"I have had the pleasure before," accompanied by a shrug 
of disdain, or through easy ideas of familiarity, should bar 
the offender from polite acquaintance. The extent of this 
bother is so great as to be a source of constant annoy- 
ance to well-bred people. 

It operates through manifold ways, one about as exas- 
perating as the other. Men are much guiltier of these 
social offenses than women. Women manage to preserve 
a very nice social code among themselves, and they have 
been able, also, to foster some genuine gentility among 
men, but this latter quality is scarce indeed. 

Crossness has almost an insuperable hold on man. Much 
of it is of necessity gilded, veneered, but the coarseness is 
there, nevertheless. Really, this is less obnoxious in its 
unconcealed state, for it is then less audacious. Masculine 
impertinence is a weed which should be killed, but it has 
so run to seed that it well nigh usurps the garden. It goes 
in front of theater entrances, and used to flourish in church 
vestibules, but has been exterminated from places of wor- 
ship. It thrives on street corners and offends everybody 
but the police. Women dare not look to the right nor to 
the left, nor pause to see the store windows, lest they en- 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 147 

counter the coarse, obtrusive stare of well-dressed vagrants, 
who should be put with the chain-gang. Girls, especially, 
should be protected from these street mashers. Really 
sensible girls can take care of themselves, but, unfortu- 
nately, it isn't every girl who is really sensible; she may 
become so after awhile, but she doesn't start out that way. 
No girl is very sensible who sets too much store by a hand- 
some moustache on the face of the man who promises 
her happiness. 

Parents are ever and rightly warning their sons against 
the evil of cards; I have never heard of a parent warning 
a daughter against the evil of moustache worship, and yet 
this latter folly overtops in sin all the card-playing in the 
world. Cards bring want and misery; mashers, sin and 
shame and ruin of life and soul. One of these Nashville 
street mashers has, among others, a peculiar case to his 
debit; his looks won for him a speaking acquaintance 
with a young work-girl, who was unused to the notice of 
such a fine looking fellow. He ingratiated himself very 
readily into her favor. Her old mother had no means, 
so the girl was sent to a mission home, where her child 
was born. 

Nature was pitying and allowed the young mother to 
die. She sleeps in the potter's field. The young man fares 
well; his name was never even published in connection with 
the little tragedy. He is said to be still successfully plying 
the calling of seduction — a man of self-importance, you 
may be sure. He is only one of many. Nobody molests 
this class, except now and then they abuse a girl who 
has a father or brother, and then there is one less seducer 
in the world. 



148 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

But generally these males are careful to play the devoted 
cnly to girls who are orphans. 

And so it runs through life — the supreme importance of 
self and the supreme object of self-indulgence. These work 
sad havoc. If there is any effectual remedy, it does not 
appear. 



Cbe Clo0ing gear. 

THE season draws near when wayward men, and men 
not wayward, regretful of their shortcomings during 
the closing year, resolve to be delinquents and transgress- 
ors no more. 

Little mental lists are made, which specify the coming 
changes of conduct, both in matters of omission and com- 
mission. 

They outline in clear review the steep and thorny way 
to heaven, which they are unalterably resolved to follow. 

And they not only mean every word of those good 
resolutions, but are firmly persuaded of their carrying out, 
even to every word. Yea, divide each word into syllables, 
and still each syllable shall have due fulfillment. 

Some men keep such resolutions tenable in their silence, 
saying naught, the more heroic in their own regard that 
they keep confidence with themselves, proud to wait until 
they manifest inaction what they will not avow in words. 
For them not the idle boasting of an impotent will which 
will forget its good intents at the first renewal of the old 
temptations — temptations which take no note of time, not 
even of its flight. 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 149 

Sin has no calendar; weakness no measurement at all. 
Both are as primeval as the world, and both as constitu- 
tional as virtue. 

Sparrows mount to eyries above the clouds on backs of 
eagles. 

Human faults similarly keep company with our virtues 
to their utmost reach. 

'Tis in some paradise of birds that reptiles best employ 
their envenomed charms. 

It has ever been so; it is so now with men. 

The finer the metal the surer the alloy. It is the 
insistence of imperfection. 

This thing of imperfection is much confused and much 
abused. Primarily, it is easily understood if one will bring 
to bear on it a liberal, honest intelligence. Ultimately, as 
its additions accumulate from single columns into the 
great receptacles of all accounts, representing the total of 
human assets and liabilities, one becomes lost in the inex- 
plicable confusion of debit and credit. 

But at least the persevering thinker finds that imperfec- 
tion is the reverse lever of the engine of human motion. 
Virtue is the throttle which nature applies to forge human- 
ity ahead. But in that progress opposing virtues would 
collide like engines in head-end wrecks, were it not for 
the vigilance of the engineer and the reverse lever at his 
hand. Trains must go backward as well as forward. They 
require sidings as well as the main, open way. 

Man's progress is after the same method. He has his 
forward and his backward course; his sidings, too. And 
lucky indeed is he whose schedule encounters no inter- 
ruption, no alteration. 



I50 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

Othello likened himself to the Pontic Sea, "whose icy 
current and compulsive course ne'er feels retiring ebb, but 
keeps due on to the Propontic and the Hellespont." 

Such men heed no counsel but their own, and require no 
bolstering resolutions in order to achieve their native or 
assigned pursuits. But these self-contained men distinctly 
represent the minority division of the human family, and 
are generally of no large concern beyond their immediate 
personal affairs. 

The men who have given to the world its strongest 
encouragements, and been as props to its finer impulses, 
were in very many instances prone to the common weak- 
nesses of the race, often to incomprehensible and ruinous 
excess. Indeed, there appears to be some vice in the blood 
of highly-gifted men, which constrains them to unbend 
from their true dignity and hold temporal affiliation with 
stiange improprieties. 

Robert Burns, for instance, exemplified the queer pro- 
clivities of genius. He is, perhaps, the most beneficial poet 
humanity ever had. 

Much admirable poetry is a luxury, and is so esteemed. 
But Burns may be called a necessity. The world would 
be infinitely poorer to be deprived of his matchless verse. 
He is at once an expositor and upholder of genuine hu- 
man nature. Dealing much with lowliness, he so fully, so 
faithfully, so forcefully portrayed its sterling qualities, its 
fundamental virtues, as indeed to place the shepherd's crook 
beside the sceptre. 

He did more than that — he made it possible for every 
erring life to discover and amend its faults, or, 
failing to amend, to bend less willingly to sin's 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 151 

behests, and to persevere with better heart in the 
virtues which still remain. He is counselor, sage, sinner, 
and comforter, all in one delightful heap. He learned from 
the sternest, wisest school-master in the world — experience. 
And he laid his lessons bare before us to their inmost parts. 

No man who contemplates good resolutions for the Nev; 
Year should fail to commune awhile with Scotia's bard. 
Particularly does his poem, "A Bard's Epitaph," seem to 
jump with the time. 

It is highly probable that this poem symbolized his own 
hurt life. Anyway, he shows the famine that waits on 
folly, and how it is best, after all, to bend the feet to the 
ground and pursue the way of duty and sobriety, whether 
one prefers the cloud or not. 

Here are some of his words: 

"Is there a man whose judgment clear, 
Can others teach the course to steer, 
Yet runs, himself, life's mad career, 

Wild as the wave? 
Here pause, and thro' the starting tear. 

Survey this grave. 

The poor inhabitant below 

Was quick to learn, and wise to know, 

And keenly felt the friendly glow 

And sober flame; 
But thoughtless follies laid him low 

And stained his name! 

Reader, attend — whether thy soul 
Soars fancies flight beyond the pole. 
Or darkly grubs this earthly hole. 

In low pursuit; 
Know, prudent, cautious self-control 

Is wisdom's root. 



152 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 



C8e ©aigDom of Wiinttu 

NATURE teaches according to her seasons. There i? 
one lesson for the spring, another for summer, then 
autumn's admonitions, and the winter's cold and cheerless 
teachings. 

Cheerless, indeed, is the winter lesson — it is a lesson of 
decay, of desolation, and of death. Unhappy would be the 
man who learned only the sad knowledge that winter thrusts 
upon the mind. 

It is a strange mission to teach decay; stranger that there 
should be decay; strangest of all that it should be expected 
of man, not only to reconcile himself with the idea of de- 
struction, but also to incorporate this great enigma har- 
moniously with the hopeful and buoyant philosophy so 
essential to the development and use of his faculties in the 
struggle for existence. 

Nevertheless, the lesson of winter is the wisest instruc- 
tion vouchsafed to us. Youth acts from impulse without 
consideration or reverence; maturity of years brings con- 
templation and the search for right, for guidance, for sure 
ways to good results, and for cautious precepts to escape 
the wrong. Then come the older years, when the strife is 
over and the tumult dies. Reflection, the melancholy, yet 
jovial, attendant of old age, follows the man's best years, as 
winter follows summer. 

Accumulated experiences wait upon this reflective period, 
and bring to bear the summarizing and adding up of the 
debts and credits of the general account of life. 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 153 

If we are to accept the trial balances recorded on win- 
ter's page, we must constrain ourselves by imaginary con- 
clusions if we are to believe that life is good. 

The marriage bell in the low steeple of the village church 
scatters the hibernating birds in gladness, as they fly forth 
to greet the spring. And yet when that same spring has 
passed beyond the summer and fall into the winter's cold, 
the self-same bell rings out again, but not in happy and 
rejoicing tones to celebrate the union of loving hearts, but 
in slow tolling proclaims that death has put asunder the 
bonds of love. 

Go forth into nature's own presence and ask of her what 
is the wisdom of the winter; what is her teaching? And, lo! 
the answer comes inaudible, yet not to be mistaken or in 
vain, that nothing endures, but that all things whatsoever 
shall pass away. Man marries the woman of his love and 
children come to bless them; he labors diligently through 
all the strong years of his life that they shall have a home, 
be educated, enjoy whatsoever of the pleasures of life he 
can provide, and form around him a happy circle, ignorant 
only of pain and want and grief. 

Does that home endure? Go back to the little town of 
the country district whence you came, elate as a youth 
to establish yourself in the world, unacquainted with aught 
save ambition and success, and look around at the old 
places hardly familiar now, and you will find that all is 
changed, that decay has wrought its work, time its infinite 
mischiefs and vicissitudes. 

If decay were all and ended within itself, our sense of 
honor jvhich it produces would be vastly reduced. The 
person or the object lost through decay passes so far as 



154 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

we know beyond a second process of decline and nothing- 
ness into a state that must be better, if there be any future 
state at all. Therefore, to pity or deplore the end of life in 
man, or beast, or flower, or tree, cannot be wise. Their 
seeming loss cannot be otherwise than gain. Even though 
there be no renewal of life, oblivion and nothingness cannot 
be had for the individual or the thing, inasmuch as it was 
foreordained from the creation that all life shall perish, 
except as it is transmitted through the generative process 
to other forms of life. 

Having once to die, it cannot be had, considering the 
pain, the sorrow, and the thousand natural shocks that 
flesh is heir to. 

These things being true, decay and death diminish in us 
their dread according as we comprehend these truths. 

It is well with the dead. No fearless mind can think 
to the contrary. They are better off, whether they were 
rich or poor, high in the world, or unregarded, for no man 
ever yet passed unencumbered of pain and sorrow through 
this troubled world. 

It is not the dead, therefore, whom we are to pity, but the 
living. Nor should we pity them, except for the sole fact of 
love. Love is the one universal quality in man, which is 
at once his blessing and his curse. While it brings all joys, 
it also brings the greatest griefs and agonies known to 
man. 

Whether a man fix his love upon a woman, or a child, 
or an animal, or a bird, or a flower, that love will at last 
be in vain. He will lose what he loves, or, going himself, 
will leave grief to the living. There never yet was a happy 
family gathered around the dinner board to rejoice together 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 155 

but that it was followed by another gathering all tears, and 
black, and bowed, to bury some member of that group. 

To love is to compel sorrow to your door, or to others 
in some day to come. If then the finest faculty with which 
we are endowed — which is love — cannot endure, nor fail to 
bring us pain, who can hope for happiness? 

Happiness! The very word is the coinage of imagination. 
It has been the dream of poets, the theme of fiction, the 
delusion of youth — nothing more. 

At this point we may well turn away from the teachings 
of winter. Shall we turn in despair? Certainly not. Does 
not spring follow the winter? Just as surely should we 
turn from gloom and gloomy thoughts to cheerfulness and 
glad acceptances of the joys of life, even though our living 
be but as a day, in the sight of Him. who holds all desti- 
nies within the hollow of His hands. 

Once free of self-importance, content to be replaced 
through our own posterity, and concerned only to make 
the best of this life according to the light of conscience 
within each of us, there is no cause for any being to acquire 
or cultivate mental disquietude through his study and com- 
prehension of the sombre and depressing truths which 
nature interjects into her general plan of being. 

There has crept into the life of to-day a peculiar cynicism 
and a fearful irreverence, which bodes but ill to the welfare 
of society. Not only are men putting the Scriptures aside 
with disdainful disbelief, but following the gloomy poets 
and philosophers w^io give us winter's teachings; they look 
upon the dictates of their own consciences as unessential, 
unimportant, and the result of early religious teachings, 
w4iich they now reject. 



156 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

Take, for instance, the remarkable and superb poem of 
Omar Khayyam, only nine hundred years old, which has 
so suddenly sprung into favor as embodying the philosophy 
of the present generation. The book is nothing more than 
an expression of the saying of epicures, "eat, drink and be 
merry, for to-morrow ye die." It utterly discourages ideal- 
ism, moral standards of any kind, and forbids all serious- 
ness in the ethical affairs of life. 

George Eliot despaired of finding truth, and in her 
despair doubled its benefits, even though it should be 
found. 

The Persian poet simply repudiated the virtue of se- 
rious living, whereas George Eliot left herself and her read- 
ers in a gloom so profound that the fogs of the sea do 
not surpass it. 

Modern doubt has considerable logic as well as scientific 
knowledge to support it, but science itself — the higher 
science — is doing no more than to make negative certain 
propositions heretofore accepted as positive facts. 

The world is not going to be without ideals. The great 
body of mankind has been forever resolved to live in hope 
and cheerfulness. This cannot be done, unless the religious 
element in man survives. 

Creeds may change or disappear, but the spirit of wor- 
ship, the looking to higher conditions, the striving after 
spiritual development, will never cease, so long as winter 
changes into spring. 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 157 

Cl)e Pa00in0 of i)ID 3Deal0. 

SCIENCE and education are mighty levelers. They are 
sweeping away many of our ideals. Having devised 
the incandescent light, man has turned his vision from the 
stars. Education is shifting him from faith to mere incer- 
titude. His infinite space can now be bounded in a nut- 
shell. He will believe no more than he is informed of 
through his finite senses. And the one good of his pres- 
ent purposes is that of creature comforts. 

Spirituality throughout all the known centuries has been 
the single master pile, the upbuilding of which commanded 
all the labor of all the sons of man. Time was, through 
all the ages past, that religion was the chief concern of 
mortals here below. The mightiest minds were its evan- 
gels, and none so lowly or so barbaric but gave it heed and 
solemn worship. 

To preach it, to expound it, to exemplify it, employed all 
the tongues that taught in any wise and all the pens that 
wrote. 

Not one song would ever have welled from human 
throats but for man's religious instinct. Without that in- 
stinct he could have had no art, no poetry, no drama, no 
creative literature. These things spring altogether from 
idealism. And idealism is the earthly form of spirituality. 

Art has gone from the world and picture making is now 
the adjunct of a trade. Poetry, too, expired after long w^asr- 
ing away, and the best verses we can produce sound "like 
sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh." The drama 
is fast parting with ideals; it hardly deigns to denote loveli- 
ness in woman, but needs must follow the degeneracy of 



158 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

the times and invite pure women to the theaters to observe 
the ornamental exploitations of women degraded and ob- 
scene. As to present fiction, may the Lord deliver us! 
And if in truth He condescendeth to the things of this 
world, may He show mercy to the fiction writers of this 
time, albeit they deserve it not. 

All things move in common in this world. If we per- 
ceive narrowly, this truth will be obscure to us; but if with 
larger view we observe the many confluences, and the 
distant sea whither they tend, it will be known to us that 
earthly conditions are the results of co-operative influences, 
working through smaller fractions into larger, and through 
larger fractions into an ultimate unit. 

Religion is the unit in man's existence. In its vast sum 
the whole of life is merged. It is the center of every tie 
that binds us, from the fireside to the government, and 
the source of every act in our lives that is founded on good 
intention. 

Everything we do, or think, or say, has at least a religious 
significance. Consequently, whatever affects the religion 
of a community or a people does, through inevitable re- 
action, affect everything connected with that community 
or that people. 

Since the wide spread of agnosticism, one can often hear 
the remark: "I have quit thinking about religion; it cuts 
no part in my life." 

A prominent man once made just that remark to me. He 
spoke without reckoning. His religious views do "cut a 
part" in his life, for the reason that through his disbelief 
his career is given over to selfishness and greed. 

If, then, a change of religious views can be so detri- 
mental to an individual, how serious, indeed, must be the 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 159 

effects of a change that wrests from society at large its 
most cherished ideals! 

We must not expect the scientist to pause in his truth- 
hunting and truth-finding because they compel us to aban- 
don long-held ideals. Nor will education halt in teaching 
that which science makes known. Truth is the one thing 
of incomparable value, and all good is relative to it. There- 
fore, all way and all speed to those who are finding and 
those who are teaching truth! 

But as these tear down, others must build up, or the race 
is doomed. 

Man can neither progress nor keep from retrograding 
without ideals. 

Materialism is incapable of ideals. Atheism would as 
surely uncivilize us as drought would destroy vegetation. 
Agnosticism simply abandons questionable shelter and 
takes to the storm. 

None of these beliefs can make for man's happiness; they 
are bound to make for his ruin. He must get away from 
them. 

But whither shall he turn? He is not prepared to believe 
that the plan of creation is a failure, existence a curse. 
Life seemeth good to him. It is not with dread, but with 
joy, that he brings issue into the world and desires the 
perpetuation of the species. Look whither he may, he 
finds order, and power, and intelligence, and harmony. 
Because of these, he knows that we are here by intention, 
and not by chance, and that enfolding us, and enfolding 
everything that is, a mighty purpose holds the universe 
in its grasp, and that purpose is from everlasting to ever- 
lasting. 



i6o THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

How, then, is that principle in him which we call re- 
ligion, and which is in correspondence with nature, to be 
destroyed by the scientific information that the biblical 
account of the creation is a myth and the problem of 
existence a mystery? 

The Scriptures aside, man is inherently religious. No 
book made him so, although he has made religious books. 
Destroy all the literature of all religions; destroy, too, all 
influences of such literature, and the spiritual element in 
man would survive and dominate him still. 

Then let us not believe, as those who despair, that the 
destruction of present ideals by science and education is to 
leave us destitute of high aims and sound standards as 
guides along the upward way. 

Creature comforts can never be exalted as the greatest 
good of existence, nor selfishness obliterate the Golden 
Rule, which every day gathers the race closer together in 
that benevolent brotherhood, out of which are to spring 
new ideals, broad-based on nature's truths and seeking 
after God. 



Lotie anD potiettp. 

WHAT is a young man to do under these circum- 
stances? He is in love with a girl and wishes to 
marry her. Both are without means, he being dependent 
on a moderate salary, the larger part of which is required 
for the support of a widowed mother and two young 
sisters. 



THO UGH TS : By Brutus. 1 6 1 

His habits are good, but his health is not, and several 
physicians have told his family that he is threatened with 
organic trouble. 

The girl loves him and would marry him, knowing these 
facts. Still she has her side of the matter to consider, and 
appears to take a sensible view of the case, saying that am- 
icable relationship with the women of his home is not at all 
probable, considering the conditions; that whilst under bet- 
ter circumstances she might gain their affection, as it is 
they would almost certainly regard her as an intruder, not 
only as encroaching on the scant funds of the household, 
but as receiving a measure of the attention and affectionate 
care which he had been used to bestowing on them alone. 

She seems to understand that a mother yields her daugh- 
ter in marriage much more willingly than a son, especially 
if he is her only son and the stay and shelter of her life. 

The mother, in this case, is an excellent woman, but she 
knows the sacrifice it would be in her life for the son to 
marry. 

Like many other mothers, she does not share her son's 
choice of a life companion, and is disposed to regard his 
love affairs as a present infatuation which he, more than 
any other, might deplore hereafter and abandon. He 
believes that his love is the genuine article; his mother 
does not. Neither knows. 

The girl will not consent to marry him unless they live to 
themselves. This he cannot afford, nor will he deny his 
own flesh and blood for her. He censures her that she 
will not deny her people, surrender her home for his, and 
take chances not only of happiness, but of escaping con- 
stant deprivations. 
(11) 



1 62 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

Men are intensely selfish — so much so that they think 
their love for a woman should outweigh all scruples which 
may present themselves to her. 

Her interests in the matter hardly come into their con- 
siderations at all. But when sensible reflection intervenes 
to curb the sentimental disposition of her love, he calls 
her heartless and declares that the divine passion knows 
no consideration but itself, and therefore she is incapable of 
the grand cataclysm of the affections. Men woo as they 
fight — to overcome, to annihilate all that is opposed to 
them. 

To be loved by a woman should be the envy of the gods, 
and yet, from a blacksmith to a President, men look upon 
it as their due, and are not the least surprised when they 
acquire it. 

A play now at a local theater represents a knight of the 
bellows, uncouth, uneducated, untraveled, rugged of nature 
and bare of mind, falling in love with and marrying an 
accomplished adventuress who had found other victims in 
two continents. 

She undertook her plan, knowing that she could fasci- 
nate him, and that his rude vanity would intercept, yea, 
altogether prevent, any thought as to how it could be pos- 
sible for her to care anything for him, grossly her inferior 
to all save morals, and perhaps in that. 

The masculine spectators laugh at this absurdity and 
call it fustian. So it is, but it is the fustian that operates 
very liberally and successfully in life. 

No man cares to calculate why a woman loves him. 
and he would be a ruffian if he did, but a sensible man 
would like to know that other people think it quite natural 
that she should. 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 163 

However this is getting away from our young friend. 
Shall he give up the woman of his choice on account of 
her obstinacy, and live down his aflfection for her? If it be 
a man's love and not a boy's, he may place his life apart 
from it and find some return in increased devotion to those 
of his home, although it is not probable he could entirely 
escape the bitter consciousness that because of them he 
had to forego his heart's desire. 

But in no event has the relinquishment of real love any 
equivalent compensation. 

It leaves a blank, an awful blank, and although a man 
may persevere in shaping his life successfully, and love on 
in unregarded silence and unknown sadness, yet he can 
never attain to the fulfillment of existence possible only 
to those who happily love. 

Love, however, can bring as much misery as joy, es- 
pecially where it is too dearly bought, curtailing, if it does 
not destroy, opportunities of a successful career, which 
flee from the presence of united poverty. Our young 
friend is not alone in his sorry plight. In the vast struggle 
of poverty and love, millions such units merge. 



^ome passing ^miu 

WHO among us of mature years does not recall 
the "Beautiful Blue Danube" waltzes as associated 
with scenes that are brightest in the days of our prime? 
What reminiscences those exquisite strains renew! At once 
reverent and joyful should be the sorcery that thus seeks 



1 64 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

to "untie the hidden chords of harmony" that Hnk us with 
the low verges of the irrevocable past. 

Not in mournful numbers only do those far-off days dis- 
close their visions in dim, religious light, for there were 
pleasures and rapture and radiance in that happy time 
which the merriments of the present essay in vain to rival. 

The ante-bellum era was a period of felicity that did 
not end with youth, but developed the graces and refine- 
ments of age and kept alive chivalrous customs in all the 
affairs of social life. 

The old-fashioned ball rooms suffered no disparage- 
ment in contrast with real castles made famous in song and 
story by pens of magic fancy — the sparkle of jewels and 
precious stones, the glitter of lights not burnished by ma- 
chinery, the perfume of living flowers, the merry dancers, 
and the harp's sweet tones, the intricate motions of the 
quadrille, the decorous minuet and the pervading waltz! 

Did not even untrained feet take on the thrill of music's 
motions as the waltz held sway, and awkward "wall flow- 
ers" envy secretly the happy dancers? 

And then such promenades along illumined, yet dim, 
verandas, with irresistible persuasion for soft eyes to look 
love to eyes that spake again — and recesses fashioned for 
love's court, wherein such testimony was uttered and re- 
ceived as only celestial auditors could make fit jurors for, so 
precious was the issue there involved. 

And at the festal board no hired caterers served formally 
dishes to appease impatient appetites, nor full-dressed me- 
nials caused the corks to pop, but hostesses, themselves, and 
heads of families dispensed home-prepared edibles and 
transported wines, whilst hidden music fell upon the ears of 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 165 

all, and jocund night displayed the scene as darkness doth 
the stars. 

Nothing so absorbs the spirit of gladness as music. The 
transfusion is gentle as dreams, which light the alchemist 
hath wrought from dust and dew and stored within the 
slumbrous poppy's subtle blood. 

Here in the Southland we learned long ago to love the 
music of our woods and streams, the consoling cadence of 
the pines, and the fantastic caroling of many sorts of birds 
— music closest to nature, sensuous and joyful, and light 
as dewdrops on the flowers. 

For songs, ours were simple ballads rather than preten- 
tious arias, harp melodies more than intense heart music, 
and with them strains appealing to the ear and the feet; the 
music of motion rather than emotion, the thrill of being 
rather than of feeling. 

With us happiness provoked that love of revels, that 
show of exultant delight depicted by Byron when "Bel- 
gium's capital had gathered there her beauty and her chival- 
ry, and all went merry as a marriage bell." 

The war placed us under changed social conditions, and 
gradually we have lost much of our mirth, subdued our 
volatile temperaments into more serious phases, and fallen 
somewhat into the general phlegmatism of the western 
world. 

Another generation will be strangers to the airy music 
that was fostered in olden times, and, by and by, new 
songs will be put into mouths and our very feet be dis- 
couraged from dancing in furtherance of ostentatious dig- 
nity. 



1 66 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

In this passing of old lays and melodies we must lament 
the more sadly that there is no muse like Moore's to woo us 
into rapture again: 

"Dear harp of my country! in darkness I found thee, 

The cold chain of silence had hung o'er thee long. 
When proudly, my own island harp, I unbound thee, 

And gave all thy chords to love, freedom and song! 
The warm lay of love and the light note of gladness 

Have wakened thy fondest, thy loveliest thrill; 
But, so oft thou hast echo'd the deep sigh of gladness, 

That even in thy mirth it will steal from thee still!" 



Opting. 

13 UT two days ago the "icy touch of unprolific winter" 
-■— ' ceased on tree and plant, and on the exhausted energy 
of the generous earth. Its bitter chidings were hushed 
around all the hidden forms of life. The sullen old season 
subsided in bursts of rain like to the remorseful tears of a 
merciless monarch who had wrought his worst and stood 
impeached, unstripped of power, and abandoned for a 
milder and a merrier sovereign. 

Like as the unfavored subject run to earth by a re- 
vengeful ruler, biding patiently to see the destroyer de- 
stroyed, comes confidently forth to greet the newer reign, 
so do the myriad forms of life that lie dormant through 
frost and cold herald the restoration of the spring. 

Winter makes no tame surrender. No mighty convul- 
sion gives it a sudden end. Fiercely it struggles with the 
winds and frosts of March to bafBe and beat back the ener- 



THOUGHTS: By Bmtus. 167 

gies of spring, but each efifort is more enfeebled, till pre- 
sently the frost is merged to dew, the blighting winds to 
balmy breezes, and the elided days outstretch to twi- 
lights that match the softest sentiments of the heart. 

Back from the south returns the northern birds that all 
the winter hovered, songless and afraid, in the hollows of 
decrepit trees and in the tangles of the sere grass, invited 
forth by the lusty notes of the native warblers, who earlier 
catch the advent of the spring. From underneath the tangle 
of sapless vines and the uncanny rustling of the autumn 
leaves, that perished long ago and now flutter about the 
garden's bareness like the hopeless memories of a wasted 
life, uplifts the dainty daflfodil, "that comes before the swal- 
lows dare and takes the winds of March with beauty." 

Round the margin of the spring, where all the winter 
long the milkmaid trod, unwary, unafraid, and dipped her 
hands beneath the shelving rocks for silversides to delight 
the young charge of a brother not big enough to adven- 
ture for such merchandise, the adder, like one arousing 
from an opiate, moves unintelligently about, darts out his 
fiery, forked tongue in true Ophidian fashion, and becomes 
a part and parcel of the spring. Bits of green begin to 
gleam across the naked wastes like festoons in a long- 
neglected hall where merriment is to reign. 

The ploughshare shines in the sunlight like a trophy 
that industry has won from nature, more easily to control 
the sources of sustenance to its service. 

The icy shackles of the brooks are gone and their ex- 
panded course incorporates the meadows and the dried-up 
haunts explored for their diminutive population, which, by 
and by increasing with the stream, will populate the de- 



1 68 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

pleted lakes and rivers where the depredator knows no 
rest. 

Overhead, the intertwining elms, which seem to be 
clinging to each other to hide their nakedness and to re- 
sist the debility of winter, are conscious of the swelling 
of buds, and begin to lift their giant tops with the con- 
fidence of returning life. 

The sapient sentinels of the bees, noting this revival, 
are fleet upon the wing, and, droning as they fly, commu- 
nicate the tidings to every covert of their kind. 

In quick succession all there is of life — and all there 
is of matter is, in some form, life — responds to that great 
mandate incorporated in the potency of spring, which is 
the Creator's testimony that the creation shall survive and 
not succumb, that it shall progress and not perish, that it is 
not ephemeral, but everlasting. 



2:Ooman anD putilicitp. 

\ LL women are more or less "beautiful and charming," 
'^*- and the sex should be altogether exempt from invid- 
ious distinctions. None is so lacking in attractiveness as to 
warrant any envy of others. The law of compensation is 
very generous to women. 

Therefore, one naturally resents the distinction so often 
made in the newspapers in flattery of some particular 
woman, as though to be "beautiful and charming" were 
so exceptional that it should be carefully chronicled. But 
even though it were exceptional, it occurs to me that the 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 169 

truly beautiful and charming woman would be loth to have 
herself so descanted on in the public prints, for I cannot 
conceive of a woman being charming without being 
modest, and modesty could not escape ofifense at being ad- 
vertised by public descriptions. 

A woman's personality is in very poor business when 
it goes chasing about in newspapers, and I should like to 
say to that large circle of women who escape such pub- 
licity that, in the estimation of men who place the finer 
value on woman, they are more fortunate than those whose 
names are paraded continually in public journals. 

It is entirely within the province of women to engage 
in many public and social enterprises, and they deserve 
the warmest commendation for it. It is also proper that 
they should be mentioned in the newspapers in connection 
with all matters of public interest. Even the society column 
of a newspaper has a proper and polite usefulness in re- 
cording the events of social life. 

The line of objection is against advertising the personal 
charms of a woman. Why should the public be told that 
a woman has a fine figure, a delicious voice, a mass of 
golden hair that would enamor a poet, eyes of transcendent 
luxury and light, a dainty foot, a hand whose touch would 
convert age to youth — figures of speech which only an 
infatuated lover should use? 

A woman's personal charms should be exempt from 
public comment. That they are not, in many instances, 
should not pervert any other woman's inclinations to a 
similar beauty. Beauty is most attractive when unpro- 
claimed, and not rated at too high a premium. 



I70 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 



att anD tbe Dtama* 

ART is the embodiment of the beautiful — the embodi- 
ment of the beautiful, and only that. 

Not a particle of genuine appreciation exists in raving- 
over the work of an old master because it is the work of 
an old master. The mission of art is not to be venerated, 
but to be admired. 

And only in so far as art pieces are beautiful in and 
of themselves are they truly valuable. 

It is not nature's plan to store away art and, as with 
wine, improve it with age. The fact of its resisting age 
and continuing its beauty entitles it to that permanency of 
esteem, that inherent value, which is properly placed 
upon it. 

But the beauty of life is continued in species rather than 
perpetuated in specific entities. The beauty of the butterfly 
that flits before us on the sunbeams is for us and for the 
hour. Another season there will be other butterflies for us, 
and in seasons beyond our own other butterflies for other 
eyes. 

So, too, the master painter shifts the canvas and the 
colors and all the lovely imagery of the sky. The clouds 
now dapple in the lofty blue; the rich-hued sunset and the 
succeeding moonbeams of to-night disperse forever — for- 
ever, in turn, to be succeeded by nature's infinite variety. 

The spirit of beauty is the breathing of eternity, but its 
visible forms are fleeting as the wind over the sea. Beauty's 
permanency is in its influence. How delicately this is de- 
noted in a song — the voice hushes, the sound subsides, the 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 171 

singer disappears; but the heart has been softened by a 
sound, the soul uplifted by a melody that can never die. 
To seek new beauty is eminently wise, and the stage 
can render no finer service than to discover new beauty 
and beautiful influences in human existence. In such a 
guest the drama is art — art in its noblest, its most influ- 
ential form. 



^elf'3mportance. 

SELF-IMPORTANCE is the mine from which energy 
is derived. 

Self-importance carries many a man from obscurity to 
high place — sometimes on merit; sometimes otherwise; but 
it carries him. 

But the great value of this sovereign energizer is not in 
the many instances of signal distinction which it has 
brought about, but in its well-nigh universal influence on 
the human family. All men have it. No reference or re- 
gard is had here to the many spurious forms in which it 
abounds, but only to that worthy kind which incites the 
great bulk of men to do something, and to think well of 
what they do. 

The world would despair if the great body of the people 
felt themselves to be insignificant. Envy would seize upon 
society and there would be constant conflicts, until finally 
it would be each man against all, and all against each. 
Chaos lies that way. 

Self-importance is the only actual equalizer among men. 
It contents them with their callings, and makes them faith- 



172 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

ful to their duties. It regulates the use of one man's hun- 
dred talents, and of a hundred men's one talent. 

This matchless quality keeps the engineer in the hold 
faithful to his post in the perilous hour, as it does the cap- 
tain to his; it leads the bricklayer unenviously by the man- 
sion he helped to build, happy in the thought of reaching 
his own gate, where his children are waiting for the man 
of all men. 

Every man's work is important. Whosoever reali7:es 
this, and applies himself to it, becomes important. It enti- 
tles him to the love of a woman; to the love of a child; 
to the respect of a community; to his own good opinion. 

But above all other consideration, it identifies him in 
honorable fellowship with all mankind. 



No other agency could have accomplished the civiliza- 
tion of the world like marriage has done. All this 
questioning whether marriage is a failure is the merest 
drivel. There have been marriages — very many marriages 
— which were failures, and worse than failures. But this 
has been in nowise chargeable to the institution of mar- 
riage — the individuals themselves were at fault. 

There has always been more or less abuse of matrimony, 
just as every good in life has been abused. The plan of 
wedlock does not contemplate marriages of convenience, 
nor marriages for money considerations. What it does 
contemplate is a union of lives, where love has brought 
about a union of hearts. 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 173 

Let foolish, shallow people laugh as much as they please 
at love — they only prove themselves to be coarse and less 
than ordinary people. There isn't a happy home in Amer- 
ica, nor in the world, where love is not the soil in which that 
happiness finds its life and growth. Put in the negative 
form, this statement is just as true — namely, in no home 
where love does not rule is there any genuine happiness. 
Not even peace nor amicable relationship abides under a 
loveless roof. 

There are homes without love that present a formal front 
of happiness to the world, but in the family life of these 
homes happiness has never been so much as a guest. Be- 
cause of this, young people should not love each other 
too easily. Inasmuch as there is a shifting, counterfeit sen- 
timentality, to which young people are peculiarly subject, 
just as they are to contagious fevers, they should be ex- 
tremely wary to shield their hearts and withhold their 
troths until they have realized beyond all doubt, as only 
true lovers can, that there is a genuine affection, strong 
enough to sustain them through all the years of their lives. 
How are they to ascertain this? There I am not authority. 

Only, it does seem to me that the first, last, best step 
of love is in the measure of congeniality. That a girl may 
be the perfection of physical beauty and wield the en- 
chantment of lovely manners is not sufficient cause for 
love. These are charms as multitudinous as the stars, 
and if nothing else were needful to complete the sorcery, it 
would matter but little which of the lovely creatures one 
fell in love with. It is the additional, intangible quality 
called affinity which, when realized, brings two hearts 
together in that perfect love which cannot be mistaken. 



174 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

The trouble is that young people are too prone to leave 
the matter to the eye and the senses without bringing their 
minds into play at all. Character is only discernible to the 
mind — and it is character which shapes the dispositions and 
desires of mature life. 

If the evidence could be taken, there are thousands to 
testify to the unhappiness caused in married life by early 
mistaken love. Adoring each other as sweethearts, their 
natures drifted apart in maturer years, leaving them no 
basis of genuine companionship. 

And thousands, too, could testify to their good fortune 
in escaping marriage with one whom in their early days 
they believed themselves in love. Of course, there is 
no positive way by which young people can forecast the 
years and see each other as they will be in the after time. 
That is why love is called a lottery. 



^|)ake$peare'$ Eetierence* 

ONLY by inference and deduction, according to our 
own lights, can we say what Shakespeare, the man, 
believed on this or that subject. We only know him 
through his imaginary personages, and these he never 
swerved from true consistency of character and utterance 
to sound his own convictions. That his characters ex- 
pressed much of his beliefs is certainly probable. But on 
grave questions of life, and death, and destiny, those char- 
acters speak differently, and none is to say which is Shakes- 
peare's view and which is not. His gems of thought are 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 175 

presented promiscuously, to be taken according to our 
several valuations. He saw the good of every creed, per- 
haps its weakness and defects. He knew the disposition 
of the mind in free, unfettered thought, is to find the truth. 
He comprehended above all things the struggle between 
man's selfishness and his sense of justice, and he knew that 
only through the enlightenment, not of one or a few, but 
the great body of the race, could justice be established 
on the earth, and that justice is the sovereign agency of 
every good, the foe of every wrong. In justice he beheld 
the motive power of civilization and the bulwark of liberty. 
Kings he made subjects of its implacable decrees, but never 
did he exalt the lowly beyond their due. The onward 
way in his perspective led not by Utopian fields, nor alto- 
gether along exhaustive steeps or deserts idle. The threads 
of our life he knew to be of a mingled yarn, good and ill 
together; that our virtues would be proved if they were 
not chastened by our faults, and our faults would despair 
if they were not cherished by our virtues. He discerned 
life to be not all gladness nor all sadness. The marriage 
bell lacked not of sweetness that he bore in mind the later 
dirge which it would peal ; beauty was but the more engag- 
ing that it must fade, and loveliness the sweeter that it 
cannot abide. Not one life in all his large array escaped 
moral accountability, and yet he invested pity with its su- 
perlative gentleness. No maudlin sympathy tainted the 
soundness of his philosophy, and in no instance did he 
abridge the eternal pronouncement that the way of the 
transgressor is hard. 

But in fidelity to that immutable law, he left its penal- 
ties to the individual conscience and to the Great Judge, 



176 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

invoking between men that mercy, that forbearance, that 
forgiveness which is the essence of the golden rule. 

He weighed in exact scale worth and unworthiness, and 
revealed human conduct in absolute reality in its full longi- 
tude and latitude. The whole book of his mind is reliable. 
His exposition of human character is authentic. His de- 
lineations cover a wider range than ever proceeded from 
another mind. Apart from the Divinity, he is the greatest 
benefactor humanity ever had. 

The most notable, the most beneficial quality in Shake- 
speare was his wonderful reverence — a quality of which Mr. 
Ingersoll's Shakespearean eulogy takes no account. 

There never lived in all the tides of time a man more 
reverential than Shakespeare. There is not a single refer- 
ence to the Deity in all his works that is not fraught with 
awe — that awe which is born not of ignorance, nor of fear, 
but of a vast intelligence which discerns a vaster. 

In all his issues of life, of death, of what may be beyond, 
there breathes a noble fear, a righteous suppliance surpass- 
ing all the language of the world, infinite in intensity and 
sublimely solemn. Who but him could have given to old 
Adam the perfect faith that "He who doth the ravens feed, 
yea, providently catereth to the sparrow, will be shelter to 
my age." Who else would have comforted the broken Fall- 
staff that in dying "he babbled of green fields." How awe- 
inspiring is the lament over one of his dead women: "She 
is gone — whither I dare not think; but she is gone." 

Macbeth's impetuous rape of conscience, Hamlet's enter- 
tainment of the mind's confusion, distracted, finally, by the 
impost of an unlawful duty — how sternly these propositions 
move to their conclusions! Who can contemplate the 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 177 

Arden scene with Orlando, a poor petitioner for food for 
his aged, famished follower, and not feel every quality of 
his nature quickened to goodness. "If you have ever looked 
on better days; if ever been where bells have knolled to 
church, if ever sat at any good man's feast." 

In all his crucial scenes of awful moment what simplicity 
of diction he employs — words of a single syllable, sentences 
which a child might speak, yea, understand, and yet em- 
bodying all the heights and depths, the breadths and 
lengths of human life! 

And when at last his chiefest creatures leave this earthly 
scene, what a blending of hope, of awe, of suppliance as 
they merge into the great silence, the unanswerable gloom! 
Like all men, there were mysteries he could not compre- 
hend, but because of this he did not yield to irreverence, 
but persevered in reverence still. 



Cj)e Coming IBrotfterfiooD. 

THERE is one holiday for one nation and another holi- 
day for another nation, one day of festival for one sect 
and another day of festival for another sect, until in these 
subdivisions all mankind has a day of rejoicing, but not 
one day for universal celebration. 

So, too, with the memorial days devoted to the dead. 
England celebrates the battle of Waterloo at annual in- 
tervals, and, likewise, commemorates her victories over 
many provinces, proud of the subjugations she has accom- 
plished. Of the same blood as England, the Americans 

(12) 



178 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

hold as their chief day of rejoicing the day that set them 
free of British power. In olden times the Jewish people 
observed, as they do now, the seventh day of the week to 
be their time of worship. With the advent of Christianity, 
its worshipers established the first day of the week for its 
religious ceremonies. 

Before our time the burial-place of man was called God's 
acre, wherever it might be, and was sanctified alike to all 
committed to the shelter of the tomb. 

Where is God's acre now? Cemetery lies by the side of 
cemetery, very much alike in outward appearance, but at 
each gate there is a sexton to make inquiry of those who 
would enter with the dead: "Whom bring you here?" 

"One of Jewish faith," they answer. 

"This ground is sanctified to a sect not Jews," the sexton 
replies. 

And so, too, at the gate where the man of Hebrew faith 
reposes, the Christian, the atheist, or the pagan, who seeks 
to bury his dead is forbidden entrance. 

Here a funeral procession winds through a crowded 
street, and he who pauses until it passes may know of a 
certainty the dead man's race and creed by noting those 
who occupy the carriages. 

Greek mourns with Greek, Jew with Jew, Christian with 
Christian. Likewise they rejoice together according to 
their sects or their nationalities; and so, too, do they bring 
together in narrow compass their sympathies and their 
help. 

Because of these things, there has never been in all the 
history of the human race one perfect day. 

Against the large proposition of one Creator and the 
unit of created things, man alone stands divided and op- 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 179 

pcsed to unity. He alone is the disturbing factor that 
prevents the harmony of nature in all the elements and 
plans and consummation of the scheme of life. 

If there is one Creator, the creatures of his work are all 
his alike, without favoritism, all of one nature, of one 
substance bred. 

Until the minds of men assent to the self-evident truth 
of the brotherhood of man, humanity will be bound in 
shallows and in miseries. 

The progress toward brotherhood is as slow as it is vast, 
but toward that far-ofif, divine event the whole creation 
truly moves, and those who scale the summits and view 
with broad and liberal comprehension the utmost truth 
allowed to our perception, are warranted in the hope that 
at last for all mankind will come one perfect day — that day 
perpetual. 



Jfeminine Drei8!0« 

IT is an extraordinary anomaly that so many women 
judge women by the garments they wear. 

We know that ill-paid women and children make clothes 
which the world wears, but God, presumably, made the 
creature inside the fabric. 

Should our standard of judgment be such as to exalt 
a tailor above the Godhead? 

Why not look to the character rather than the clothes? 

Outward adornment is eminently commendable, particu- 
larly in woman. The Creator would never have made the 
wonderful jewels which men dig from the ground and sell 



i8o THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

for fabulous sums, only that He desired in the plan of 
nature for woman to be beautifully adorned. 

He did not intend, however, that woman should reach 
the point where a mere masculine tailor, setting the fash- 
ions, should be the god of all their idolatry. 

Neither did He intend that woman should view each 
other solely from the exterior, without reference to the 
nature, the heart, the mind, the soul within. 

Every woman should dress according to her own fancy 
and not be a slave, as of a verity they are to the shrewd 
tricks of avaricious tailors and milliners. 

In the wonderful advancement of woman now under 
way this evil may find a remedy. But it is a long way of?. 

Women dress not for men, but for women. It is a mat- 
ter of rivalry. 

As for men, they often find inexpressible charm in a 
woman whose raiment is that of simple black, costing less, 
perhaps, than the price of a walking cane. 

With sensible men, at least, feminine fashions of dress 
have but little consideration; only unconsciously they like 
to see a woman so appropriately attired that they will not 
be mindful of her toilet one way or another. 

Men look to the woman and not to what she wears. 
And a brilliant woman, though she be not beautiful, can 
easily wrest the laurels from any "beauty" who relies alto- 
gether on her diamonds for brilliancy. 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 1 8 1 



Clje ^tuDp of 2xaomanfeinli« 

THE study of womankind is woman. It is a study very 
generally neglected, however, judging from many 
sorts of evidence. Men study woman more than she does 
herself. This is why the standard of womanhood is under 
masculine control. 

Until woman studies herself more, she can only accept 
and not establish her standards. And so long as men regu- 
late those standards, so long will they fall short of woman's 
complete nature and capabilities. 

One hears it said so often in jest and seriously that there 
is no understanding a woman; he really adopts that opinion, 
except as to the woman nearest him, whereas, in fact, it is 
often the latter that he least understands. 

Home life will never become what it should be until men 
study their own women more and other women less, until 
they eliminate hum-drum conditions from their own fire- 
sides, and exercise their agreeable and lovable qualities 
under their own roofs. 

The woman a man most studies is the one he hopes to 
marry, but that is during the period of his courtship — a 
condition necessarily least favorable to an impartial, thor- 
ough comprehension either of her nature or her character. 

Courtship is relative to marriage as dress-parade is to 
battle. 

Until a woman has studied her sex and herself, she is 
probably studied as much as she deserves by men. If this 
be not an error but true, then her further advancement 
must be of her own initiatory doing. If she realizes the 
standard to fall short, she herself must extend it. 



1 82 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

Individually she cannot extend that standard, but col- 
lectively she can — or rather she might. Can is a potential 
word, possibly safer in reserve and present. 

The hardier women of the North are almost desperately 
at work in this undertaking. But they put the cart before 
the horse at the start and have never detected the mistake. 
So the horse, like the crab, is going backward all the time. 

The mistake is, that in the formation and development of 
clubs, and associations, and societies of innumerable sorts, 
whether to commemorate the past, to command the present, 
or to control the future, their radical object is not so much 
improvement as influence. 

All sorts of petty and personal aggrandizement are 
sought in these organizations, and thus is marred or pre- 
vented any real advancement of the sex. 

The trail of the petticoat comes so near the timeworn 
path of the pantaloon it galls man's gibe. He gives way, 
to be sure, but it lessens his deference and lowers the 
standard. 

In the South female societies are also numerous and in- 
creasing. But it would be a bolder pencil than that wherein 
these lines are written that would add, also, to the relative 
position of the cart and the horse in these Southern societies 
as those described above. 

Prudent observers may inwardly fear that social rivalry 
may become the bctc noir of these organizations, and thus 
interfere with the readier advancement of the standard of 
the sex. But that fear may be entirely previous, for, in- 
stead of taking the course of further severit}^ in judgment 
of members of their sex, individually, these societies may, 
through proper, honest, earnest study, enlarge their under- 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 183 

standings and widen their sympathies, and drain away gos- 
sphere of woman to the four walls of her house, or the front 
day not men but women will be the defenders of women. 

Shakespeare's greatest dereliction, in his peerless service 
to womanhood, was in not creating a feminine counterpart 
of Antonio, to be defended by a thousand Portias and ap- 
plauded by every womanly creature since the Elizabethan 
age to the last moment of the human calendar. 

I have no sympathy with those who would confine the 
sphere of woman to the four walls of her house, or the froni 
gate of her yard, or the front gate of her neighbors' yards. 

The law of proportion should be as effective in a woman's 
life as in a man's. Her disposition is quite as sociable as 
his, and her tastes as much entitled to indulgence, and if 
the character of her tastes weighs in the matter, decidedly 
more so. 

The idea that marriage should transform a woman exclu- 
sively into a housewife and bar her from the world, like a 
cloister does a nun, belongs in the garret of an antiquity. 
The church for devotion ; art-halls, lecture-rooms, and pub- 
lic libraries for instruction and entertainment; plays and 
operas for pleasure societies, and clubs for usefulness, con- 
versation and the interchange of ideas — these are her privi- 
leges by inalienable right, and the household will be im- 
measurably the gainer if she indulges in those privileges. 

In all things the influence of good women is good. Con- 
sequently, that influence should be broadcast, with this 
special observance, that she bear constantly in mind that 
whatever good she exerts is the reflect result of the good- 
ness within herself. 



1 84 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

Let her then give all possible development to the many 
sources of goodness within her, that she may thereby help 
to exalt the standard of her sex. 

The best goodness, the highest standard possible on this 
earth, is perfect womanliness. It is toward this eminence 
that every woman should direct her life, for herself, for her 
sex, and for the glorification of humanity. 

She cannot clear the trenches and scale the heights 
without man's assistance. She is born in weakness and in 
tenderness; he, in strength and courage. And as both as- 
pire, he must lend her his arm, and his mind, and his will, 
and for these she will yield him her faith, and her heart, and 
her hopes. 

The beauty and the willingness of womanhood shall be 
in her petition, as she calls to him: 

"Gather, my Love, my woman's hands in thine. 

And teach them strength, since tenderness they know; 

Strength that brings service to all things below, 
The overmastering stars that make no sign 
For pity's sake. Make thou thy wanderings mine. 

And let me stoop with thee 'neath winds that blow, 

Paolo and Francesca to and fro; 
I feel with thee against the stars malign 
That light our Magdalena down to- the mire. 
I claim my right to take my wifely share 

Of every doubt that shudders in thy soul. 

Cries like a bat, or burrows like a mole. 
I must go with thee, dear, tho' the end were 
No light in Heaven, but a wandering fire." 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 185 



Cl)e (ZBJultation of ^mit* 

FROM the lullaby over the cradle, to the death-hymn in 
the darkened chamber of old age, music pervades 
the human heart with a precious sweetness and a divine 
solace not less sustaining than the ineffable rapture of love. 
If there were just the right song at the right moment, from 
the right lips, the violent hand of the suicide would fall 
nerveless to his side; the murderer would throw away his 
weapon, and the thief withdraw into the shadow; the 
outcast yearn for goodness over again, the tempted cling 
closer to the rock of ages. 

With music, the world can be won to gentleness and nur- 
tured into strength. The Angelus gives cheer to the toiler 
in the field, and the Marseillaise defiance to the soldier on 
the battlefield. The brawny African sings at his task and 
drills contentedly the imbedded rock, unmindful of the 
broiling sun. The needle woman has moments of forget- 
fulness as she hears the unpremeditated ecstasy of the 
encaged bird overhead. In hospitals, where the sick and 
dying lay, music has brought tranquility and forgetfulness 
of pain. How many and many a neglected woman has 
relieved the anguished vigil of the night with some dear 
song fraught with the precious memories of her past! No 
woman ever quite grows old who has the consolation of 
one song embodied in the life-love of her heart. If shadows 
creep around her in her loneliness, she may dispel them 
for at least a little while with some old, loved melody treas- 
ured in her bosom, like the bridal veil in her girlhood trunk. 



1 86 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

But music is not only consummate in its consolations — it 
is a present, an embodied joy, the first and finest emotional 
intoxicant, the very wine of life, the exhilaration of exist- 
ence. What wooing is at all comparable to a plaintive song 
from lips that tremble with love? What answer so enrap- 
turing, so enthralling, as the song from her throat at twi- 
light, so soft lest it startle the slumbering birds from the 
hushed boughs? 

Music began by appealing to the feet, and the waltz of 
the present shows that it has never relinquished but in- 
creased that mastery — a mastery strangely enough re- 
strained in instruments. The human voice has nothing in 
common with motion, but with emotion. A reveille sung 
would stir neither cavalryman nor charger; no more would 
a solemn mass, played by a band, move a congregation to 
devotion. 

As the vocal faculty developed, reed and string instru- 
ments were devised to accompany and sustain the voice. 
Thus came about the concord called melody, which for 
centuries engaged the genius of the great composers, and 
rendered music the daintiest and most delightful menu of 
the heart. Next came into the fold the romanticist, who 
with mythical and legendary themes appealed to the fancy, 
leading it beside still waters and green pastures as beautiful 
and dreamful as the Nirvana of the lotus-eaters. 

Thus with the senses enthralled, and at least one faculty 
of the mind a willing votary to its charms, music thrived 
and acquired dominion over all the gentler attributes of 
man. 

Once the handmaid of poetry, it rules now% an adored 
and gracious sovereign in its own right. 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 187 

Sovereigns require prime ministers, however, and one 
recent aspirant there was who sought to extend his sov- 
ereign's dominion until imagination itself, the highest at- 
tribute of the mind, should assume allegiance to its reign. 
What ascendency may be thus established it is for the 
future to disclose. 

But whether or not all instruments and all voices are to 
be aggregated into one majestic harmony until the Iliad 
and the Inferno and the Paradise merge into a modern, 
all-embracing epic, the time will never come when the in- 
violate music of Italy will be dethroned from the hearts 
of the world. 

The hand of melody carries an invincible sceptre. Its 
bays are wreathed of immortelles. Its life is a part of the 
glory and exaltation of eternity. 

Music is the leaven that leaveneth the whole lump of 
human fellowship. It is the food of love. There can be 
no excess of it. It vibrates through all nature to the ever- 
lasting. 



a Cute fat t|)e 15lue0. 

SOMETIMES those who muse on human folly and 
human vice become very disconsolate and depressed. 
Hopeful views of the future take wing and flit into the 
gloom, existing things seem wrong, and one feels no sense 
of pride in being human. 

But there are other times and other musings which lift 
and disperse these mists, the whole dome and horizon of 
vision clears, becomes illumined and fervid with pride and 
hope. 



1 88 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

William Cullen Bryant's remedy for the ''blues" was to 
go forth under an open sky and list to nature's teachings, 
but there is a surer efficacy than that. 

Go forth into the highways and byways until you find 
a good deed, and yield yourself to its influence. If you 
have judged harshly of human kind, it will mitigate or abro- 
gate that judgment. 

If you have fallen into a strange apathy, whether things 
be right or wrong, it will cancel that indifference and sub- 
stitute an active concern that better things shall be; it may 
help you yourself to some good act. 

No philosophy can be altogether despondent or gloomy 
which takes into just account the good deeds of individuals 
and the beneficent efifect of those deeds on others. There 
is no warrant for the lack of faith in the progress of morals 
so long as there are people doing good and the whole world 
subject to the influence of good actions. 

Take a mixed audience in a play-house, representing high 
and low degrees, upright lives, and lives of weakness and 
sin — not a person in it will applaud the triumph of evil over 
good; not one will fail to rejoice in the victory of good 
over evil. 

In cases of extreme villainy, we may be glad if the princi- 
pal be punished, but generally we are content if virtue has 
its reward, and charity so possesses us that we are better 
pleased if the wrongdoer be dismissed, enjoined to sin 
no more. 

So long as the love of good preponderates over the love 
of meanness and wrong-doing, just so long will there be a 
preponderance of goodness over evil. And the race is not 
retrograding while right conduct is in the ascendency. 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 189 

What is most desirable for the furtherance of goodness 
among men is to seek contact with the good deeds of 
others. Who ever saw a kindly act that would not have 
been glad to be the one to do it? 

There is a peculiar pleasure in doing a kindness which 
nothing else supplies. The best incentive to good conduct 
and good deeds is to view their excelling charm in others, 
just as it is wise to keep in mind the fine thoughts of others 
so that nothing base shall proceed from our own. 



^in anD ^ong* 

BEN BOLT," "Bessie, the Maid o' Dundee"— on how 
many hearts these songs and others like them have 
fallen with healing, with balm, with inexpressible benedic- 
tion. 

Through all the course of time men have been particu- 
larly susceptible to the influence of narrative songs. Each 
generation likes original melodies peculiar to its own social 
conditions, its general sentiments. 

And so they come and go; they have their little day, and, 
like flowers, loved and beautiful, that fade and die with the 
season, these songs of sentiment sadly serious, and se- 
riously sad, have their day, their little day, and perish with 
the hearts that loved them. 

Above every grave the spirit of song hovers like a star. 
Some well-remembered tune once gave delight to the poor 
tenant that slumbers in the tomb — only a lullaby perhaps; 
perhaps some simple melody rudely arrayed in incongruous 



I90 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

words, too faulty, too simple to live, but precious to ears 
that hear no more, to hearts that can never throb nor thrill 
again. 

The sublimity of Wagner, the ineffable sweetness of 
Verdi, conform to the higher excellence of the soul. But, 
if the truth be told, there is none of us to whom in the 
depths of being there is not some unpretentious song far 
dearer than the rest. 

We may love it for its memories or for itself — but we 
love it, and in the last moments when we must lay aside 
all that we know of life and surrender our being utterly 
to resolve, loved or unloved, into lifeless dust — in this fear- 
ful surrender, when the mind gives up resistance and as- 
sumes the calm of that vast vestibule which fronts the 
narrow house of clay, it is immeasurably precious to hear 
again, for the last time, the song we cherished in days of 
strength and struggle. 

As the last notes float faintly from the ear it is easier, 
much easier, to go, for shades of memories sweep by, lead- 
ing to the tomb like a happy wedding throng embodying 
happiness and dispossessing death of every terror. 

Let it be a sin-stained woman, whose life, whose honor 
were the forfeits exacted of love — remote from all her own 
flesh and blood, and among those who neither know nor 
care about the heartaches and the agony, the scarlet en- 
larged into a frightful alphabet, whose every construction 
spells sin, only sin, and yet some urchin of the street, un- 
mindful of his song, careless of its melody, ignorant of its 
significance, sings as he passes, words and air panged bod- 
ily in her heart with every sentiment which abandoned, for- 
bidden joy intensifies into subHmity, the sadder, the sweeter, 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 191 

the more beautiful, that she may not, must not, dare not 
participate in the consolation it may offer. 

It has the agony of crucifixion in its rude reproach, but 
also the balm so heavenly to a hurt mind, to a wrecked and 
ruined heart, restored in those last hours to the gentleness, 
the unavailing tenderness, which implores the everlasting 
for innocence again. 

And this dying sin leaves her body and her soul to their 
account, as a frost shrinks from the sun and disappears. 



Degeneracp of Dre0$. 

WERE it permissible to furnish addenda for the books 
that have been written, Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus" 
should have a postscript on the tailor-made dress, and, 
from present indications, one on the shirt waist. 

In these radical dress movements there is something 
more than natural, if philosophy could find it out. Both 
movements were precipitated by common sense, and when 
common sense speaks for a reform, fashion-makers are im- 
potent against it. Yet in both these reforms something 
valuable was lost, which warrants inquiry, whether the 
ends gained justify the change. 

In the case of the tailor-made dress, the change was a 
distinct avowal that woman is of the earth earthy, and 
proposes to array herself according to physical conditions, 
and not according to aesthetic and spiritual objectiveness. 
It w'as a surrender of her "divinity" to material considera- 
tions, the subordination of beauty to comfort, and the dis- 



192 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

play of physical outlines. In other words, while there were 
some common-sense reasons in the change, nevertheless, it 
was a subtraction from the higher sensibilities in favor of 
the lower. The woman ideally feminine lost, and the 
woman carnal gained — a sorry trade. 

The mere gallant, the sentimental rhymester, would 
protest that a beautiful woman is beautiful in any dress, 
and that Kitty of Colraine is quite as much a divinity 
among knighthood as any bejeweled princess of the realm. 
But it is not so. Dress has very much to do with a woman's 
beauty and with her impressiveness. 

But let it be understood in this argument that beauty is 
of two kinds — sensual and sensuous — one physical merely, 
the other comprehensive of every element of the beautiful. 
It is wholly unnecessary to dilate on the distinction — every 
man understands and every woman understands it. The 
woman whose charms are sensual merely is aware of the 
character of infatuation she wields, how brief its date, how 
frail its hold, how vast the vacancy of her after life. It dis- 
poses her to excessive and riotous vanity, and oftentimes 
to utter disregard of the simplest moral restraints. Her life 
is apt to be rended in early folly, and to be thrown back 
upon her a thing of shreds and patches. 

Woman's other beauty does not infatuate; it enchants, re- 
fines, subdues, and gives to life ambition, fortitude, purpose, 
poetry, and love. 

The beauty never fades, nor ever brings satiety. Its frui- 
tion has no terminal place. The adversities of fortune 
yield to its balm; infirmity of years doles sparingly its woes 
in this lovely presence. And in the far-off, concluding time 
the bridal chamber of death holds not a single horror 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 193 

against the calm, the undisturbed repose of the beautiful 
sleeper, not less but more adored than in the bridal days 
of love, when yet love's shadows were so rich in joy. 

Romeo, in the tomb of the Capulets, denotes the fullness 
of this finer love. Passion's ardent gaze turned all aloof 
in that grim charnal house where Juliet lay, and when his 
grief-blurred gaze sought her transfigured face he found 
her beautiful in death. "Beauty's ensign yet was crimson 
on her lips, and on her cheeks, and death's pale flag was 
not advanced there." 

It is the province of true love to seek its haven in one 
only being. The happiness of man is vested in the enter- 
prise, and, all unconscious to him, the woman of his love 
becomes the source and center of all beauty, as complete 
and rare as one entire and perfect crysolite. 

Daintiness is the desirable effect for feminine dress — an 
impression of harmony with the gentleness, the soft refine- 
ment which men associate with woman. And all but the 
vile should pray the angels and ministers of grace to for- 
fend the day when gentleness and refinement shall not 
distinguish women from the rude grossness of man's baser 
sense. 



an e^npuftlisfteti Critiute, 

[The following beautiful tribute to a friend who died some months 
ago was written. It is one of the prettiest things he ever wrote.] 

WHEN a youth I heard a solemn voice declare to 
an humble congregation: "Judge not, that ye be 
not judged." 

(13) 



194 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

Later in life I read from one of the poets: 

"Who made the heart, 'tis he alone 

Decidedly can try us; 
He knows each chord, its various tone. 

Each heart, its various bias.'' 

It comes to pass with us all that in our judgment of men 
mercy seasons justice, for only by extenuation can we our- 
selves confront all we have done. 

One has fallen asleep whose life was troubled, whose 
ways were almost wholly wrong. 

Nothing less than the wide defense of Calvary could be 
ample unto his sins. He is better ofif! 

For days and weeks and months, consumption wrought 
its wreck in him slowly — so slowly that he himself became 
impatient over its delay. Yet he murmured not. He only 
said, "I wait." 

I know him as completely as one man can know another 
— knew him when a large business was in his hands; when 
friends were thick and proud around him. I saw his rise, 
I knew his fall. 

He knew himself. He said to me long before the end: 
"I have sowed to the wind; I will reap the whirlwind." 

Another time and later he said: "When a man is shut 
off from his career, it is a misery to drag along; it doesn't 
suit me; it's hard to be patient, but it's coming to me, so I 
am satisfied." 

The world could not afford to pity him, even though it 
had been so disposed. He knew this. He never asked for 
leniency. He stood by his record; not in defense, nor yet 
in shame, but out of absolute simplicity. 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 195 

Love can destroy as well as make. Happy people do 
not understand this. In all such matters it is the wretched 
who understand. 

Cold and formal men, to w-hom life is a business enter- 
prise, heap reproach upon the memory of such a man. 

Against their opprobrium, I ofifer these humble state- 
ments as testimony to a dismal life that might readily have 
been high and noble, except for the error of a heart. 

Right was not obscure to him — he was simply led away 
farther than most men are, that is all. 

So across the waste of a life, across the gloom of death, 
I say, "My friend of better days, may God give you rest — 
that rest which passeth all understanding." 



Ci)e OBtiolution of tte Kepotter. 

IN olden days, before newspapers were in existence, the 
stage supplied the functions of the modern press. Stroll- 
ing players, mere vagabonds in the public eye, held the 
mirror up to nature, and with the art of mimicry showed 
virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very 
age and body of the time his form and pressure. 

There was one kindly soul, one fearless pen, to justify 
and ever to exalt the actor, who, up to that time, had found 
the esteem of the world to be beyond his reach. This praise 
was the service Shakespeare rendered to the players of his 
time. 

The printing press usurped the function of the stage in 
that service, and holds it now^ with ever increasing power. 



196 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

It is the strolling reporter, in this age, who discloses to 
the public mind the form and pressure of daily life. 

Virtually he is without public regard; they know him 
not, nor care one rap about him. He signs no name, but 
obscures his personality in the subtle influence of thought 
that strangely lodges in telegraphic date lines. 

For instance, a reader of the newspaper sees in the tele- 
graphic columns a cableg;ram like this: 

"Will Snow, a reporter, son of Chancellor Snow, of the 
Kansas University, was drowned while trying to board the 
transport Tartar, just arrived from Manila." 

This message was published in the American of Wed- 
nesday. It caused no grief to any resident in Nashville, 
but was read without the moisture of a tear in any eye, 
suggesting not even the slightest fragment of a thought; 
forgotten in the same second of its reading. The informa- 
tion bore no more importance than attaches to the fall of 
a sparrow. 

Yet to enlarge the little picture involved in those few 
words is to behold a tragedy that to some one heart rained 
its anguish in a flood of tears, or with dumb secresy en- 
veloped it in the great volume of woe which forms so large 
a part of the story of human life. 

It is not the woe of that bereavement, common to us 
all, to which I would refer, but only this: On an island, 
ten thousand miles away from his home, this reporter, an 
unknown quantity in the results of war against a savage 
foreigner, flashed under the wide waters of the Pacific daily 
information of the progress of a conflict that involved more 
than the lives of a few savages and fewer Americans. For 
this service no honors were in store; no glory waited; no 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 197 

applause. This was the task of unregarded duty, whose 
fulfiHment has no larger object than the settlement of a 
moderate salary. 

The incidents of life are not prearranged. Nor can 
they be forestalled. They simply happen, that is all. Mon- 
archs encounter them, and nations weep over and wonder 
at the strange disasters. 

Reporters encounter them, too, but no nation weeps and 
no community feels the shock, so ordinary is its character. 

And yet it seems to me that in the large ledger that is 
supposed to be kept like bookkeepers charge or credit 
actual accounts, where favoritism plays no part, but red 
lines are drawn according tO' the figures of the two oppos- 
ing columns, it seems to me that a reporter, faithful to his 
work, supplying the products of his brain, serves well, 
and, therefore, has a balance to his credit that is worthy 
of consideration by men who measure men not according 
to their rank or station, but character. 

Reporters endure much of the poor consideration that 
the starving actors encountered centuries ago, and yet they 
hold in the hollow of their hands, each day, the reputation 
of some person — his upward or his downward way. In his 
palm, also, are events often obscure in their meaning, or 
covert in their interests, which it is his alone to present, 
honestly or dishonestly, to the readers of the paper. 

What he writes is subject to the revision and authority 
of his superiors in the ofBce. They change his copy, and, 
sometimes, discard it altogether. But essentially they rely 
upon him for facts, and upon his character for truth. Not 
once in a decade is a reporter found to be devoid of 
these requirements. Often he is weak — but rarely corrupt- 



igS THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

ible. Constant contact with the ways of the world, such 
as falls to his lot, is not conducive to exalted views of 
human character. According to his degree of intelligence 
he is constrained to see frailties and vices and defects of 
integrity that restrain him from magnifying the merits of 
men. 

Humble, himself, and without hope of any pronounced 
advancement, he labors on, assiduously and true to his re- 
sponsibilities, not embittered by pessimistic experiences in 
life, but, on the contrary, recognizing the good and turning 
as far as he can from the evil, he lives and dies in the 
majority of cases an upright man, whose genuine worth 
meets with but little recognition, serving the public in a 
more valuable way than they attach to his impersonal 
office. 

War, nor pestilence, nor fire, nor famine deters him 
from his place of duty. 

With a reverent pen I ofifer reporters of the press this 
slight evidence of esteem, as one working with them, who 
comprehends their worth. 



Ctoo OBtiilg Cl)at Cftritie* 

OBSEQUIOUSNESS and insolence stalk through the 
world audacious bastards, coupled and inseparable. 
They are as twins begotten in a plague. Yet they are re- 
ceived in polite society and are sometimes honored guests. 
A stream of fine blood drained into the North, and a 
stream of fine blood drained into the South, and filled 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 199 

each petty vein and artery of our national life when the 
republic was founded. 

There was no system of caste to absolve the lordly and 
abash the meek. The minion Wealth had not set foot on 
these shores, shod like a bully and arrayed like a clown. 
It was the land of the pioneer, who selected this site of 
liberty to build on. And the first foundry he started was 
the workshop of character. That foundry thrived with mi- 
raculous speed, and it was not long before articles of incor- 
poration were drawn up and established under the title of 
the Declaration of Independence. And independence it 
was, not only in the sovereignty of our institutions, but in 
the veritable pursuit of life, liberty and happiness in the 
highest of all sovereignties — the rights of the individual. 

If there are two elements impossible to vigorous nature 
of pioneers, obsequiousness and insolence are the two. 
One common trait of virtue forbids them both — and that 
is candor. 

In our forefathers there must have been an average 
of 75 per cent, of candor in public conduct, and in private 
life 90 per cent. It wouldn't do to mention the present 
percentages to which that virtue has shrunk. 

Why the shrinkage? Wealth has caused it. In the old 
world power played this evil part. Power in this country is 
not only defiant, but is defied. It is trite but true to say that 
rule derived from the body of the people cringes to the 
people. We hardly permit a senator to be grave and 
reverend enough to greet a constituent as "Mr." Every 
man who has a ballot he must hail as "Tom," if so be, or, 
at the limit of reserve, as "Thomas." In this way a horde 
of politicians has been developed, who are nothing more 
than puppets emasculated of individuality and as subser- 



200 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

vient as a slave. We have even advanced to the point of 
tolerating and supporting in the highest offices the known 
subservient tools of bosses, despising and accusing them as 
such, and bowing ourselves to the bosses, whereas if we 
had right views of things and the least diminutive bit of 
courage every infernal corruptionist in this country would 
be thrown into prison between the dawn and the dark of 
a single day, and kept there until his pernicious carcass 
rotted in the cell. Pluck out the core of corruption, if an 
evil is to be suppressed. Whenever wealth is found hiring 
procurers and debauching honesty, the government ought 
to confiscate that wealth to the last cent. As it is, we are 
a nation of grumblers and tolerators, more contemptible in 
endurance than those who inflict the abuses. 

Men obsequious to wealth are not beyond the reach of 
corruption, and are insolent to poverty, adversity, and all 
the wide scope of lowliness. They help to widen the breach 
that is coming some day — not a breach between capital and 
labor, nor any other form of socialism, but a breach be- 
tween honesty and dishonesty, between courage and fear, 
between character and corruption. 

The human race is not going out in pollution, nor is it 
going to abide forever with the plague of hypocrisy cursing 
its nostrils. 



IBeponti ti)e CU)iligt)t. 

NOTHING is more familiar to us than death. Infancy 
has felt its touch; mature men have yielded to its 
power, and withered forms have tottered into its embrace. 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 201 

To consider the rose is to associate with the sense of 
beauty, which it inspires, the knowledge of decay. 

The meaning of this force which has absorbed life into its 
maw from the beginning is essentially inscrutable. Strong 
minds have assailed its mystery in vain, love has implored 
against its cruelty, and tenderness stood mute and wonder- 
ing by the grave. 

At last after unknowable centuries of anxiety and ques- 
tion, the world has almost tired of the problem, and be- 
come so accustomed to its presence that it is unheeded, save 
when it invades the immediate circle of one's home. 

Recently, however, it took away a life so beautiful and 
pathetic that the whole community shared with her house- 
hold their unspeakable grief. 

Her life was embodied in loveliness. Her face had the 
warmth of cheer and sunshine. Her presence was like the 
incarnation of good will. In the midst of gaiety she added 
to its charm. And where shadows fell she moved with 
gentleness and sympathy that rendered grief less bitter. 

Enduring bereavement, peculiarly poignant herself, never 
obtruding on her friends, she went about the city blessing 
and blessed. 

She was an exquisite type of Southern womanhood, and 
by that type is meant a woman not spoiled by luxury nor 
cast down by woe. Gracing a ball-room, she also had the 
finer gracefulness of pursuing, with murmuring fidelity, the 
rough path of self-support. 

When fate smiled upon her, she greeted it with a smile, 
and when it frowned she trembled not, but smiled again — ■ 
the smile of fortitude and fearless purpose. 



202 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

Slie strove and won for her childrens' sake, and in that 
striving won the heartfelt esteem of a whole city. 

Two sentiments attach to her memory in the regard of 
those who, like myself, did not personally know her — one, 
gratitude that she strengthened the higher love that good 
men hold for womanhood; the other, pity that a beautiful 
life was taken away under circumstances so sad that her 
grave must ever be a place where sorrow weeps with in- 
finite regret. 



amiatJilitp. 

TRACED on a dainty note-sheet, I have these lines: 
"What quality should a woman employ to be ever 
agreeable?" 

Amiability. If a crusty old bachelor knows anything 
about it. 

It is strange, at first thought, that women seek the sug- 
gestions of men who actually can know but little of what 
they are talking about in matters pertaining to feminine 
interests. And yet how readily we noncompetents respond, 
without embarrassment, without hesitancy. 

It must be that married men are so happy in their estate 
they have neither the time nor the inclination to address 
themselves to the bliss, prospective or immediate, of others. 
On the other hand, we rovers, who make it our special 
charge to be concerned about the welfare and felicity of 
women in the abstract, magnify our dreams into reality, 
and personify our ideals into existence. We have our 
heroines, even though they only live in books and are ours 
only by courtesy of the author. 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 203 

Shakespeare, I believe, is accountable and responsible 
for an immense amount of the rubbish known as bachelor- 
hood. He gave us illusionary women, and they are so 
provocative of idolatry that we seek about to find their 
veritable counterparts. Failing in the search — not because 
they do not exist, but that we seek as though for the sub- 
stance of a song — we decry the living creatures, exalt our- 
selves, and spend the balance of our years in love with 
false creations, or as self-exalted censors and counselors 
of the sex at large. 

How bold we make! The work of the Creator would 
have to be undone to please our limitless exactions. 

Woman was ordained in the creation to be the paragon. 
But, no! we irreconcilable, fastidious monsters will not have 
it so. Shall we raise ourselves to feminine standards? Cer- 
tainly not. Rather let us degrade them to ours, we seem 
to say. We do not, will not say so much, but we act it, 
we live it. Therefore, we are wise counselors who feelingly 
persuade ourselves that if the other sex would but hear 
and heed, we would bring about a revolution in society by 
which counting-houses, offices and shops, and the like im- 
perative concerns, would be abolished and Eden be again 
ordained. 

None should be permitted in that regime of universal 
beatitude to stir abroad unattired in the finer fabrics of the 
loom. We gentlemen would carry the snufif box; women 
should not. Each man should be a knight, accomplished in 
tourney, his lady's servitor and king. 

We would not counsel women, but adore them. And 
feminine prototypes should not abide in books, but in man- 
sions whose latch-strings would respond to our soliciting. 



204 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

We should talk to veritable Olivias; mayhap, woo' them — 
at least not find them only in dreams, in books, in winter 
embers, in summer moonbeams, in the baleful fire of con- 
fidential cigars, on the far borders of mountain tops, or in 
the shimmer and sheen of covert streams which drift 
through silence and solitude to the sea. 

But we must take women as they are. And if we would 
encourage, permit them to entertain the state provided for 
them in nature's plan, these inconsolable, fantastic dreams 
would merge into realities. 

How far I have drifted from that inquiry! Again let the 
word be repeated — amiability. Bear with that which you 
would rectify and reform. Bear with it to the end. 

It may reach attainment somewhere along the desolate, 
despondent way. If not, it were better anyhow to love in 
anguish, in despair, than to lack that sole compensation for 
the heartaches, the grief and gloom, the endeavors and 
failures, the unsatisfying success that comes like the play 
of "Hamlet," with no Hamlet there — better all this than a 
barren heart. 

Better a blessing than a reproach. And if you lose hap- 
piness, seek it as an unwilling fugitive eager to find its 
place, bewildered but benignant still. 

Masterpieces, whether of comedy or tragedy, and whether 
by Shakespeare or others, abide and survive, in turn, the 
sensational outputs of the day. In New York City at this 
time the morbid successes of the year are being presented. 
But there, too, Joseph Jefferson, who has passed beyond 
the allotted years of life, is playing that old, consummate 
comedy, "The Rivals," before the largest audiences of his 
long career, and those seeking to see the play have to 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 205 

secure seats for days in advance. New York is given to 
supporting adventurous plays better than any city in the 
land, and yet we find an abundance of undegenerate taste 
in that stronghold of cosmopolites. Nat Goodwin and Sol 
Smith Russell would adopt high comedy if they could play 
it, but both have essayed it only to find themselves want- 
ing. The public demand for it exists, but it is beyond the 
scope of their faculties. 

In view of these things, it might be unjust to the stage 
to say that tragedy and comedy have seen their day and 
that worse things have driven them off. These worse 
things succeed only in the degree that the supply of good 
things is inadequate to the demand for entertainment. 

The best plays and the best players will always have 
the ascendency in popular patronage. And the time will 
never be when the Shakespearean dramas will not lend 
to the stage its crown and its sceptre. 



Cf)itjalrp anD tl)e Cime$. 

A GENTLEMAN said to me yesterday: "I gather 
from your articles that you would like to^ restore 
chivalry to its old-time sway. I want you to answer in your 
column whether or not you believe this can be done." 

I answered him that the grace of a day dies with the 
day — that what is dead, is dead. 

Chivalry died long ago. Pens nobler than this humble 
one of mine — pens of men who wrote immortally, with the 
philosophy of ages urging them, with poetry beautifying 



2o6 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

every thought, and with love of all mankind strong in their 
purposes, essayed in vain to keep alive the world's chivalry. 

If they failed, shall a pen obscure and unregarded at- 
tempt the impossible feat of resuscitation? 

No! The warrior passes into historians' books; the 
knight into tales written by old novelists. Reality passes 
into the unreal; the sunlight dwindles into that afterglow 
which we call the dusk; love culminates in memory; the 
blazing hearth to-night flickers with embers of the past. 

That which has been cannot be again. There never lived 
to any length of years a being who escaped this bitter 
truth. 

Whether to-morrow be good or ill, we only know that 
after every to-day things are never the same again. 

It transpired in better ages of the world that chivalry 
reigned sovereign among men, a quality as absolute in 
distinction of men as gold is absolute in determining the 
fineness of metals. 

That time has passed, and with it the best gentility of the 
human race. Chivalry is the summit from which men 
deteriorate. And we are now well along the journey of 
deterioration. The old ante-bellum South was the last 
portion of the race of man to relinquish chivalry. Since 
then it has not existed upon the earth. The very scions of 
that old South now apply derision to the word. Wherefore, 
that chivalry is dead, assurance may be doubly sure. 

But though we no longer relish of that ancient virtue, 
shall those who write with serious pens degrade their con- 
sciences into miserable acquiescence with the moral debase- 
ment of the times? 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 207 

It is not to prosper, to contend against the current of the 
time. But if the current be foul, those who know it to 
be so should so declare and bear the hazard. 

The man who says that the self-degrading "New South" 
ranks with the conquered chivalry of the old, speaks like 
a lackey. 

The death of chivalry in the South obliterated the finest 
part of our inheritance and left us exposed to all the in- 
sidious vices of the world. Those vices will become as 
flagrant in the South as in the North. And not one word 
proceeds from any source to give the truth its name. When 
the simplest appeal is made for honesty and uprightness, 
for fairness to women, and humanity to the poor and 
wretched, the writer is scornfully told that he should have 
belonged to the age of chivalry; that he is visionary and 
annoying. 

I can well believe that Victor Hugo knew the futility of 
"Les Miserables" toward redeeming the wretched from 
their bondage — but he wrote their story and made the 
enlightened world ashamed to look itself in the face. 

His mighty heart is still! There is none like him to-day. 

But though such vast currents pour into the past, smaller 
streams remain to bear the story of the centuries on, that 
goodness and gentility shall not perish from the earth. 

Ethnologists have classified man into many segments, 
grand divisions, families, branches of families, and, by this 
declension, on ad infinitum. A classification different from 
any I have found, I here submit as proper study of the 
evolutionary divisions of man's condition. First, no civili- 
zation, all men savage; then tribes, for protection and 
aggression, tribe hating tribe, all depredators and destroy- 



2o8 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

ers. Second, civilization; toleration and endurance obvia- 
ting wars; the rights of others recognized — rudely and 
crudely, but recognized; treaties between peoples hav- 
ing interests both in common and opposed. Third, comity; 
separation into nations, with mutual approval; then all the 
subdivisions now prevalent in the governments and the 
society of the world. 

The fourth grand change, apparently almost at hand, 
whatever its designation may be, is, in reality, fraternity — 
the concluding step into the homogeneity of the human 
race. 

There, then, in this brief outline, is indicated the sig- 
nificance of the gifts of little children to one another. Early 
grounded in the faith of youthful brotherhood, growing 
together in knowledge, some day, perhaps, to stand in 
mutual, well-beseeming ranks of citizenship, allying, not 
dividing their strength, the generation now growing up 
worthily represents the first fruits of that civilization which 
is to accomplish the brotherhood and happiness of man. 



a ^an of tl)e SiOorlti, 

WHO but a zealot of a sect withdrawn from some pop- 
ulous center to escape the contact of wickedness 
and to thrive on piety — who but some such severe scorner 
of sin could have compassed in a little phrase so complete 
a type of a certain order of men as that disclosed in the 
expression, "A man of the world"? 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 209 

Let us suppose an island remotely isolated from the 
world's affairs; its inhabitants the descendants of genera- 
tions of Tolstoian recluses ; its simple yet severe life free of 
contamination by the world's compound and complex 
existence. Hither comes a stranger and abides. His ways 
are not their ways, his beliefs not their beliefs; his diver- 
sions, his pleasures, not such as theirs. 

Still, he transgresses no law; bears himself unoffendingly, 
mingles freely and jovially; mixes laughter with their tears, 
and after hearing their ascetic proverbs and solemn adju- 
rations, regales them with anecdotes; reserves not his wine 
for the sacraments, but devotes it to toasts pre-prandial 
and to good fellowship post-prandial; puffs his weed luxu- 
riously and blows the smoke into invisible vacancy, as 
though dispatching argosies of fancy on happy seas of 
expectation, with a clean bill of health and the voyage 
guaranteed not to be thwarted by "the acts of God or man, 
nor forestalled by piracy or war." 

Inevitably, for one so different from them, so enwrapped 
in the act of living, and so content to be merely a mortal 
liver, our stranger compels an amount of notice not agree- 
able, perhaps, and certainly not flattering to his vanity, 
in being thus independent of criticism. 

We can easily suppose, among so kindly a sect, a cer- 
tain degree, together with a certain period of forbearance. 
But where a person is the object of general curiosity, con- 
jectures soon turn to whisperings, whisperings to louder 
words, and by this progression comes avowed and scathing 
criticism. Thus following our stranger's life in the little 
community, we are not surprised to hear the village priest 
exhort against the worldly-minded, and are quick to see 

(14) 



210 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

the application of his censorious speech to the stranger 
amongst them, who is thenceforth known as a man of the 
world. 

Maybe the stranger has won us to like him in a way, yet 
we cannot but justify the pious excoriation and admonish- 
ment, for to live among those truly spiritually-minded and 
be one's self, of the earth earthly, is to flaunt righteousness 
as something tedious and not worth the while, to be guilty 
of folly; and whosoever becomes a devotee of folly sins 
against human sense, even were the spiritual sense in man 
illusionary. Wherefore, when the minister admonishes our 
stranger that to be a man of the world is pleasing to the 
Prince of Darkness, and displeasing to the great Sovereign 
of the Universe, we must, perforce, pronounce Amen to 
that deliverance. 

Here, then, our stranger becomes the type defined "a 
man of the world" — a man possessing attractive qualities, 
and indulging in pleasing tastes, but one, nevertheless, 
lacking in spiritual grace, and repugnant to Him who 
said: "My kingdom is not of this world." 

This phrase, devised as a term of reproach, and applied 
as a warning, served its dual purpose well in reforming 
many who, without realizing it, perhaps, or, realizing it, 
were leading worldly lives, and of restraining the tempted 
from courses of folly. 

Not only did the phrase apply to spiritual shortcomings, 
but it operated in a measure as a social incubus. While it 
did not lead to ostracism, it was none the less a serious 
handicap and served sometimes to obstruct and even de- 
feat the best purposes of the man thus stigmatized. This 
was in days and centuries gone by. 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 211 

In our time the phrase has lost something; much, indeed, 
of its obloquy. The reasons therefore require a more 
searching and general examination than is here proposed. 

Briefly to note the change in its relevancy, it may be 
said that the term is now courted rather than shunned by 
many very respectable men. It has come to serve as ad- 
vantageously, in many instances, as it serves detrimentally 
in others. As now applied, in its best usage, it denotes 
a man unfixed in philosophical matters, unconventional in 
social relationships, disposed to be cynical about things 
established and things proposed; a free lance, whose pur- 
suit is pleasure, whose conscience is either stifled or agree- 
able to his whim, whose designs are not mated with moral 
scruple; whose actions are directed by unbridled inclina- 
tion, indulged according to opportunity — in short, one 
mentally a vampire, morally a vagabond. 

Confused with him, on one hand, is a worse man than 
he — the libertine; and, on the other hand, the bachelor set, 
whose modes of life are necessarily more or less unconven- 
tional, and whose independence in lines of thought and ac- 
tion more or less improperly subject them to the general 
classification of "men of the world." 

It will be seen from this latter fact that worthy and hon- 
orable men are sometimes called worldly-minded without 
sufficient warrant of truth. It is in fairness to men thus 
misunderstood that the distinctions here noted are briefly 
set down by one who has had considerable contact with 
many classes of men. 



212 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 



15oto to t|)e Summer (^itL 

WHAT sort of note is this to be sent to a writer by a 
man in ambush? 

"Why don't you write something- about the 'summer 
girl' and prevent young men from being duped by her? I 
know whereof I speak; I've been up against her." 

I've no doubt that he has; neither do I doubt that if he 
"went up against" a buzz-saw and got himself distributed, 
he'd blame the saw — at least that's the way his note reads 
to me. 

Of all the preposterous terms ever put into circulation, 
"summer girl" is the most absurd. There is no such 
creature, unless young ladyhood is to be classified into all 
seasons. Nobody ever refers to the winter girl, the spring 
girl, the autumn girl. Then who is the summer girl? Does 
she dwell in a cave all year except for the little while when 
people assemble at the seashore, or mountain side, or in 
the valley, and then come forth from inanimation, like 
Pygmalion's Galatea — a beautiful embodiment of spirituelle 
existence? Or is she a very human princess of all seasons, 
a daughter of the years, twelve months older to-day than 
when the calendar registered this date one anniversary 
ago? 

And when summer is over, and its flirtatious indolence 
at an end, is she not then the harvest maid? And when 
the grain has been garnered is she not the holiday girl, 
all bronzed and buoyant and beautiful? So, too, when 
ice and frost and penetrating winds employ her face for 
their panel and bedeck it with all the fine colors of cold, 



THO UGH TS : By Brutus. 2 1 3 

when the warm blood mantles her cheeks, her eyes sparkle 
with the glow of the stars and her spirit revel in animation 
— is she not old winter's child, the jewel of the world? And 
when spring has come, is she not guerdon of the flowers 
and fruits of love? 

Yea, let the canker and the worm be his who seeks auda- 
ciously to woo her as none too good for his dry heart to 
master and subdue and disenchant. Let her despise the 
thralldom that he ofifers, and though she be wooed not at 
all by mortal kind, will not the daisies kiss her feet, the 
winds betwine her ears with sweet avowments, the stars 
repudiate all other loves, and lark and thrush and robin 
contend in lordly rivalry of song for her dear approbation? 

Rejected suitors make ever bitter cynics, and will not 
infiict upon themselves the censure of unworthiness. Mighty 
and puissant fools they be, learned in all laws, perhaps, 
but bankrupts in affairs of love. Let them rail on; the 
composite girl of the seasons shall not be shorn of her 
divinity because of their dispraise. 

What would this old world be without her? It would 
be a sterile promontory, an unweeded garden that grows to 
seed, and all the fineness of existence would be swal- 
lowed up in the vile maw of Mammon. 

Let us bow to the girl of all seasons: 

"She walks in beauty, like the night 
Of cloudless climes and starry skies. 

And all that's best of dark and bright 
Meet in her aspect and her eyes." 



2 1 4 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 



a iLettet'0 ^totp, 

SOMETIMES letters reveal some life experience much 
better in their brief, abrupt disclosures than even a 
volume by a third party could relate. One was shown to 
me recently — it was by a woman, an American, sojourning 
in London. It read: 

"I would have so much less to deplore if you had told 
me of a particular incident in your life, instead of leaving 
it obscure, for my own peace of mind, as I give you the 
credit of believing to be the motive of your concealment. 
Nevertheless, you who have been abroad so often should 
have learned that the sea itself is impotent longer to im- 
pede the world's determined intimacy. The fortnight has 
elapsed in which you were to join us in Paris, and I have 
assumed that you have decided to remain in America, 
which I should advise you by all means to do, if reliance 
is to be placed in seafarers, who report the Atlantic to have 
anticipated the equinoctial season, disporting its fury in the 
most dreadful way, as though to rid itself of human intru- 
sion. It was with exasperating doggedness that I per- 
suaded my aunt to abandon our itinerary and return with 
me to America at once, despite the sea storms, as I am 
arranging for an art class at home, and I must secure my 
pupils before they fall into better hands. So we sail to- 
morrow. 

"Having exercised a woman's prerogative of dealing 
with myself first, I have a word concerning you. I have 
a memento to give you on my return. It is only a ring, 
but, oddly enough, it is exactly a duplicate of the one you 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 2 1 5 

gave me in one of your volatile hours, only your initials 
followed hers in the one ring and mine in the other. She 
has been dead some six weeks, as the result of a runaway 
accident. I formed quite a dear acquaintance at our hotel, 
who has taken me with her on some of her missions of 
mercy to unfortunate women. One of these was the 
woman whose ring I shall restore to you when we arrive 
home. Noticing my ring, which I had carelessly neglected 
to remove, she extended her dainty hand, perfectly de- 
lighted over the coincidence that our treasures should cor- 
respond. She had me to make the room vacant of those 
around; there in the twilight, oblivious of all pain except 
that pain which no friend, no physician can mitigate once 
it takes hold of a woman's heart, she told me her story, 
which was your story, too, only I didn't divine that until 
too late to interrupt her, for she only mentioned your name 
at the close. 

"Some women continue to care for a man after they 
know him to have wronged another woman — perhaps I am 
that weak. But you shall have the two rings, and in sur- 
rendering mine, believe me, I shall try hard to put you as 
completely out of my life as the ring from my possession, 
and baseness from esteem." 



Qien anD Wiomm* 

A POPULAR theme with writers is the perennial 
problem. Why men do not understand women. 
A vast amount of psychological inductions and deduc- 
tions have been evolved from the subject, but the matter 



2 1 6 THO UGH TS : By Brutus. 

continues to be mooted and insoluble. It is to be presumed 
that there exists between the sexes a mutual desire to un- 
derstand and be understood. Considering the close rela- 
tionship and the community of interests between the sexes, 
it must be granted that for a perfect attitude between them 
there must be a perfect understanding one of the other. 

In addition to this utility, it is easily to be seen that a 
mutual propensity obtains between men and women to un- 
derstand one another. To the extent, therefore, that there 
is a lack of mutual comprehension, there is a corresponding 
lack of adjustment in relationship; something is wrong 
which should be set right. How to get at it is the 
problem. 

As far as a diagnosis is obtainable, it is that men furnish 
the hindrance to better acquaintance. Men are much 
harder to understand than women, because they are more 
adroit, more self-concerned, and decidedly less scrupulous. 
There isn't anything mysterious or obscure in the feminine 
nature to those who earnestly and honestly seek to know 
that nature. Perhaps the greatest trouble in the matter is 
that men don't try to know women. 

Even in the days of courtship they are governed by an 
unreasoning fancy, which never allows any pertinent con- 
sideration, such as he bestows even on the matter of select- 
ing a business partner. It is doubtful if there ever lived a 
man who seriously doubted his ability to win any woman 
he might choose to win, or questioned his capacity to 
render her happy. 

At heart he feels that by marriage he bestows, and not 
receives, an honor. If he be a tanner, and a Queen should 
leave her throne and marry him, he would feel that she 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 217 

had simply made a sensible choice, and if he felt slightly- 
flattered he would attribute it tO' his irresistible personality. 
It is amazing how little modern men seek to understand 
women, or even one woman. Instead of ministering to and 
fostering her feminine disposition, he expects her to subor- 
dinate her individuality and amalgamate her being with 
his. Nothing could be more astounding than the majority 
of marriages. 

Love, sentiment, congeniality, understanding — these 
things are largely lost sight of in modern wedlock. It is 
the rule rather than the exception to find a smart man 
married to a silly woman, and a high-class woman married 
to a dolt or a knave. Plain, plodding men marry ambi- 
tious, spirited women, and stupid, gossip-loving women 
become w-ives of ambitious and gifted men. These strange, 
unhappy contradictions compel into bachelorhood and spin- 
sterhood many who prefer a solitary state only to that of 
such misalliances. 

This apathy and neglect in the study and understand- 
ing of woman's character have a very deteriorating efifect 
on the sex at large. They have no incentive to the full 
development and employment of their natures. On the 
contrary, they are likely to find greater contentment by 
drifting into the common-place existence which men seem 
to consider the proper thing for them. Nobody can con- 
sider the existing relationship of men and women without 
realizing that women have decidedly the worst of it. 



2i8 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 



a Caise of 15Ug!)t. 

IF there is one thing more than another in this world 
which should not run to waste, it is love — that mar- 
velous quality which comes nearest to affecting the pur- 
poses of the Deity. 

In its best form it has none too many votaries, and is 
sometimes the medium of wreckage to one who feels it. 
There was a great rock at the margin of the gulf where I 
was glad to go the first summer I saw the sea. It is a 
splendid vision to watch the sun dip into the deep and then 
to feel the twilight charm which comes to a mind at rest. 

I was going out to enjoy the gathering dusk one day, 
when a young woman said, "May I go along?" I had 
known her melancholy, and had noted that gradual dis- 
tressing decline which proceeds from a troubled mind or 
an agonized heart, until it infects the body with disease 
and leads inevitably to death. 

She was a sensible woman and knew that her life, like 
the vast tide before us, was going out. She said never 
a word, but looked far into the falling gloom which was 
enveloping the sea in its vast embrace; intuitive discern- 
ment takes hold of one at times and compels one to under- 
stand. At last she spoke: "You try to explore this mys- 
tery before us. I am soon to learn a larger mystery than 
the sea involves. You have a friend, strong in your affec- 
tion. That man I love, but he is not to know it. I bind 
you solemnly to that. You wonder at this. The reason is 
simple. It is not a case of disappointment, for I knew 
from the first that he did not and would not care for me. 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 219 

I wanted one creature in the world to know why my Hfe 
has been one of such utter lethargy and uselessness, and I 
selected you to tell it to." 

Back through the mist and the gloom we went to her 
hotel. After that I saw her once. She was simply attired, 
with a great cluster of roses in her hands. I was glad 
to see that her face was free from that awful look of pain 
which a despaired heart forces on the features. I could 
not look into her eyes, for they were closed — closed in 
that eternal peace which eventually brings to an end all the 
happiness, all the care, all the disappointment, and all the 
pain of the fitful fever which we call life. 



Cfie Coming 15roti)er|)ooD. 

TVT OT in the minor invocations should men assail the 
-^ ^ hearing of the everlasting in these final hours of a 
century, whose close concludes not merely the cycle of a 
hundred years, but completes and terminates an epoch in 
human afifairs. 

Not before altars of a sacrifice should we, in well-intended 
worship, supplicate that universal ear in furtherance of 
circumscribed and speculative creeds. 

At such a time, pregnant with fundamental concern to 
all mankind, who can believe that the Creator's vast vision 
beholds in classes, or with graduated scale of favor, the race 
which He ordained as man? 

At such a time the earth should be one tabernacle, and 
the voices of men proclaim a common allegiance to Him 



220 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

who over-arched the globe with stars, gave one sun to shine, 
and estabhshed the terrestrial sphere and orb related to 
a system of worlds so vast that to contemplate its infinity 
is to tremble in awe and reverence. 

"Thus alone can we attain 

To those turrets, where the eye 
Sees the world as one vast plain, 

And one boundless reach of sky." 

The exceeding loss of the closing century is in the death 
of poetry; the largest gain to be transmitted to the new 
century is the wonderful progress in the federation of man- 
kind. 

Henry Ward Beecher's was the first great mind to build 
an enduring nucleus of rational religious worship, based 
upon the Fatherhood of God and the consequent brother- 
hood of man. 

This broad view of the Creator of life did not originate 
with him. Greater thinkers than he, contemporary and 
precedent, discerned through scientific reasoning that 
which he promulgated through philosophical comprehen- 
sion. 

Darwin's predecessors, Darwin himself, Froude and Tyn- 
dall, Huxley and their throngs of gigantic mental kindred 
— those peerless men, who did more for the world than even 
poetry has done, which is claiming a great deal, ridded the 
thinking world of ancient delusions and impositions. They 
said to rational minds, "You shall not build on sand. The 
progress of the race has been too often hindered, its welfare 
too often destroyed by ill-concealed canons of theology. 
Building and tearing down, rebuilding and tearing down 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 221 

again, have brought about confusion enough to utterly 
deter the purpose of creation. It shall be so no more; we 
will dig deep into the past, blast the rocks of antiquity, and 
from the bottom of that foundation build better than the 
pyramids, for ours shall be a structure quarried by the 
mind of man from the everlasting substance of truth." 

Then came Mr. Beecher himself, man seeking rocks and 
deep foundations, and applying the soundest principles of 
philosophy to this scientific building, declared it good. So 
wonderful was his voice that millions listened and, listen- 
ing, knew. It was a noiseless cataclysm, but more pro- 
digious than all the antedating reformations of the world. 

The metaphysician, for the first time in human history, 
fell back, and rationalism became the mind's medium of 
action. Those not afraid to see were made to know that 
the creation is one and, therefore, the Creator one. 

Nor did the knowledge of evolution burst too soon upon 
the world. No great change is ever precipitated into hu- 
man afifairs. They come like a sequence in logic. The 
mind is ready to receive them, and the crews are changed 
without hubbub or interruption. 

So in the new century the ^ lerhood of man will 
supersede creeds quietly, gradually, and with well-beseem- 
ing order. 

Science beholds in the distance the border of its domain, 
the confines beyond which the mind of man can never hope 
to successfully explore. Those confines are Whither and 
Whence? 

The ages past have speculated in vain on these great 
interrogations. The ages to come will likewise speculate 
on them in vain. The mind must be content, hovvcver, to 
be unenlightened beyond the alTairs of this world. 



222 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

But here, where we are mortal, destined to bear burdens, 
to endure pain, to suffer distress, but where there are also 
innumerable joys, benedictions, and benefactions — where 
there is so much good that we can do, where character can 
be made God-like, and where our intellectual capacities are 
bounded only by the infinite — here such lasting good is to 
be accomplished through the common fraternity of men 
that the new century, which is the herald of this fruition, 
should be hailed as a time when the ripened wisdom, the 
accumulated knowledge, and the imperishable goodness 
of the ages shall possess the little, and make it fertile with 
human kindness. 



a dinger of tfte past. 

MUSIC entrusted much of its treasure to Emma 
Abbott, and she flung it to the world like rain — re- 
freshing rain that fell upon parched places and made them 
green; that touched the violet and the rose of being and 
bade them dispense their beauties and their fragrance amid 
the courts of love. 

Oh, the old walls and the new of Nashville theaters! 
Are they not still invested with the resonance of those 
hushed melodies when in the vanished years — the golden 
years to come — the Gypsy captive sang: 

"I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls, 
With vassals and serfs at my side, 

And of all assembled within those walls, 
I was the hope and the pride." 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 223 

Who that heard the ecstasy of her voice as it breathed 
that song into very hfe has ever forgotten the thrill of the 
quickened heart, any more than the sweetly mournful voice 
that answered unto hers: 

"When other lips and other hearts 

Their tales of love shall tell, 
In language whose excess imparts 

The power they feel so well. 

There may, perhaps, in such a scene, 

Some recollection be 
Of days that have as happy been — 

Then you'll remember me." 

Mists have gathered over those singers and the songs 
they sang, and further and further they recede into the 
darkness of the bygone years. Yet ever and anon the 
broken threads seem strangely woven through the loom 
again, and the living appear to stir the silence of the dead 
until, like the ghostly King of Denmark, some sorry cir- 
cumstance recalls the departed in visions and remembrances 
distinct as life. 

A poor and well-nigh friendless girl when life's demands 
of labor for the family's livelihood first rested on her, 
Emma Abbott sought timidly the realm of song. Her 
voice had a new, lingering quality, no more to be described 
than subtile fragrances invite analysis, and, withal, out of 
the shadows and the gloom of want she moved like an 
embodied joy, wooing the heart to gladness with the melo- 
dies of love. She came as sunshine, and, like wine, her 
song thrilled and rethrilled the senses like unaccustomed 
revelrv in vacant chambers. 



224 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

Everywhere throngs gathered when she sang, and grew 
to love the melodious creatures of her mimic art. Thus 
triumphing in art, she had the gain of fortune, too — and 
over these there rested the beauty of a spotless life. 

But no matter which the way, the end is one in every 
life, and the distance thither is never long, whether we 
rejoice or weep. 

So at last the ebb of the tide bore her away, and a great 
stillness followed, as when an echo of the night dies on a 
lonely hill. 

Her means were ample to leave those dependent on her 
beyond the reach of need. And she so devised. 

Now comes a weak, infirm old man, her father, and out 
of the largeness which she left to sustain in comfort and in 
ease his declining years, he makes demented sport with 
his allowance, wandering from place to place, scattering 
literal handsful of money along the streets in boastful evi- 
dence that he is no longer poor. To one he said but re- 
cently: "Yesterday in New York I paid $4 for a dinner. 
I used to pay 20 cents." 

What a miserable age must be his to have no recollection 
of his child's beautiful art, no fine persuasion to devote her 
leavings prudently to his needs, and with the surplus bless 
her memory with deeds of kindness and little acts of charity 
such as she herself was wont so cheerfully to perform! 

One touched with pity by the spectacle, and mindful of 
how different that old man's life might be were she but 
here to guide and guard it through the closing scenes, can- 
not help but feel how much better after all it is that be- 
tween the living and the dead a veil extends, through which 
no vision ever penetrates. 



THO UGH TS : By Brutus. 225 



a 15irD ^ketcl)- 

CHIP" was quite a mature canary when he and I be- 
came acquainted. We didn't get along any too well at 
first. He had at one time had a beautiful trust in the 
couple that raised him, and had been given all the liberty 
commensurate with his welfare, his cage door standing 
open whenever the windows of the room were closed. 

It was a favorite trick of his in the dining-room to perch 
on some convenient object near the table and break bread 
with the family. He was as fond of attention as a debu- 
tante, and as feelingly chagrined over neglect. As cus- 
tomary, where there is a family pet, he was extremely ex- 
acting in his whims. But there was something attractive 
about him that rather rendered his egotism a source of 
additional interest. 

One day he chanced to light in front of a small mirror. 
Whether he took the reflection to be another bird, or 
whether it proceeded from self-admiration, he went almost 
into ecstasy over it. After that he always wanted a mirror, 
and he would sit in front of it and give his feathers as dili- 
gent and dainty a dressing as Beau Brummel did his rufifles 
and his wig. 

The family thought it proper that he should follow the 
bird custom and go to rest at twilight, but Chip seemed 
averse to that and used to give them a chase rather than 
go in his cage. He undertook to hide one evening about 
the hour they were in the habit of dispensing with his antics 
and his songs. He succeeded so well that they didn't find 
him at all that night. He was found next morning behind 

(15) 



226 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

a picture, nearly frightened out of his wits, and it was 
evident he had spent a sleepless night. He went to his 
cage himself afterward. 

Before I made his acquaintance he had a number of hair- 
breadth escapes from great bodily injury, such as the cage 
being blown from an upper window and dashed to pieces 
on the stones below; of being taken by the insolent foe, the 
early morning newsboy, and sold, not to slavery, but to 
the taxidermist; of being almost within the clutches of 
that wary depredator, the neighbor's cat — and other like 
adventures, until he lost all sense of security and stayed 
constantly in his cage, a songless, frightened bit of lifCj 
aware of its own helplessness and with all sense of security 
gone. 

To have turned him aloose would have been inhuman, 
for he would have been put to death by the sparrows, or, 
aside from them, he could not have provided for himself. 
He knew nothing of outdoor life and had had only human 
companionship. On several occasions he thought it best 
to run away, so he took advantage of his liberty. But he 
never went far, and was taken up by kindly neighbors and 
returned. Gradually he grew more confident and cheerful, 
and after awhile he resumed his songs, but he was still 
timid when I took shelter under the same roof. 

The bird books stipulate a limited and consequently 
monotonous fare, especially for canaries, and Chip had been 
scrupulously limited to the dietary menu of such books. 
Over the protests of his owners, I took charge of his bill 
of fare, and when he found his cage decorated with bunches 
of seeded grass, he took to it like a girl does to sure enough 
steak after a term in a boarding school. I gradually ex- 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 227 

tended his menu, until it included nearly every food of man 
or beast. He thrived on it, and as I also saw his ablution- 
ary proclivities, which were unusually pronounced, properly 
administered to, he took to me very kindly. 

I found him to be of a pugnacious disposition, and many 
a playful bout we had. I never knew which enjoyed them 
most, he or I, but as he seemed never to tire of them, I 
am pleased to believe he did. He would always greet the 
family in the morning with outbursts of song. Sometimes 
I would ignore him a little while, probably sitting with my 
back to him. He would carry on like a neglected child, 
but the moment I turned toward him and called his name, 
he would leap down to a lower perch against the front bars, 
with his feathers ruffled like the quills of a porcupine, his 
bill extended as if he intended to swallow me like the 
whale did Jonah, and his whole attitude that of fierce, 
though feigned, defiance. 

Then we would have it. I would let him get a hold 
on my finger, and in turn would catch him by the bill, or, 
if he came close enough, by the feet. He was game to the 
end, and I always let him feel that he had whipped me. 
He was very fond of having me hide and try to slip up on 
him. I was only successful in it once, and it surprised him 
so that he nearly fell off the perch from fright. 

I had to be away once for several weeks. They told me 
Chip quit singing, and could not be induced to play, and 
scarcely to eat. He simply sat dejected, looking eagerly 
whenever the door of the room opened. When I came 
back I think I have never seen such manifestations of de- 
light. He sang and frisked about the cage all day. I used 
to set him on the steps near some flowers I tended. He 



228 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

would watch with the hvehest interest, and Hked for me to 
put a flower between the bars for him to pick to pieces. 

One afternoon, following our usual morning bouts, I ob- 
served in him an unusual quietude. He did not sing, nor 
could I induce him to play. He looked appealingly at me, 
and I knew he was sick. Well, we did all we could for 
him; he knew that. Then we had him carried to the bird 
doctor. He gave him something, but it did no good. 

If it had been any other bird I would have said give it 
something to bring its sufferings to an end — but not Chip. 
Chip! Why, I had come to look on him as my comrade^ 
my friend, and on myself as his playmate. 

Relief came at last — that final relief which becomes the 
friend and not the foe of man and beast and bird. He was 
taken back home and we buried him in a casket of flowers. 
He was only a diminutive bird, frail as a flower, but he 
had brightened the home, and it was dark that day without 
him. 



Ct)e ponert? of 20calt!), 

THERE lives in one of the Eastern States an old gen- 
tleman who is in an awkward predicament. Until old 
age came upon him and bade him prepare to go hence — 
soon it may be; shortly it must be — he was looked upon as 
a man to be envied as the possessor of great riches and 
industrial renown. Were his wealth to be left intact, his 
demise would bring to probate an estate valued at several 
hundred million dollars. 

Realizing that he must soon part company with his 
riches, he is in much concern how to bestow his wealth 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 229 

to good uses. Recently he made public request for sug- 
gestions as to the best objects to which the bulk of his 
wealth could be applied. 

Already he has acted in the matter to the extent of 
donating large sums to libraries and educational institu- 
tions, and probably other gifts will follow during his life, 
but there has come a lapse in these disposals, which indi- 
cates a probability that the larger part of his fortune will 
wait for division after his death. 

Considering the fact that he grew to manhood virtually 
without education, himself, there is something pathetic in 
his commendable patronage of the cause of learning. 

But what is far more pathetic is the general attitude of 
the man to the human kind. 

Think of a man living to threescore years and ten with- 
out developing a single line of sympathy with the world, 
by which, in his old age, he would be self-instructed, either 
as to specific or general conditions among mankind, where- 
by he could act intelligently in contributing to the alle- 
viation or the advancement of his fellow-kind — a man by 
his own confession so barren of mental and moral resources 
within himself that he must appeal to the public judgment 
and conscience for guidance in restoring to men the large 
usufruct which he acquired from the labor of men. 

A man should not be judged before his time, nor is it 
the object of these lines to designate the man here referred 
to, for the reason that what is here intended is not a judg- 
ment of this particular individual, but a presentation of 
an actual personality which should be studied by every 
young man whose character and career are in process of 
development. 



230 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

It is necessary for every well-ordered life to know what 
to avoid, as well as what to seek. In so far as world- 
ly success is accounted desirable, he affords a conspicuous 
example of it. Perhaps there is much in his life worthy of 
emulation; if so, he should be duly honored for it. Far be 
it from this pen to decry the amassment of fortunes. At the 
same time the spectacle presented by this man's life is so 
striking that an observant man cannot restrain himself 
from considering it in its true light. 

That light shows a man 70 years old, worth $300,000,000, 
with this proposition confronting him; "I am at the end 
of life, with riches far beyond the requirements of those 
related to me. I have no further use for this great wealth 
— what shall I do with it?" And vaguely shaking his head, 
he seems to mutter to himself: "I do not know." 

Although the comparison be in the nature of a sacrilege, 
contrast this man with Victor Hugo. Does any man be- 
lieve that the author of "Les Miserables" would have been 
perplexed what to do with $300,000,000. He could have 
distributed in good uses three hundred times that sum in 
France alone, and still not have abolished all its poverty 
and ignorance. And even without money, he wrought such 
a charity with the substance of his brains that, throughout 
all the coming ages, the gospel of his goodness shall be a 
vital and an incalculable benefaction to the whole human 
race. 

But to leave that prodigious Frenchman out of the argu- 
ment, suppose the tomb of this man of millions to be beside 
that of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Which of these mausoleums, 
gentle reader, would you prefer to be your own — that of the 
man who, amassing much, found his task finished, not 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 231 

knowing what disposition to make of his gains, or that of 
the man who, amassing wisdom and love of humanity, so 
diffused his great soul into the world that, were no other 
WTitings than his to remain, mankind could never thereafter 
be wholly bad. 

To live in the world to a ripe old age, unsympathetic 
with the great throbbing heart of humanity, unmindful 
alike of its smiles and its tears, ignorant of the love of fine 
characters, blind to beauty, deaf to music, unacquainted 
with nature, possessed of nothing but burdensome gold, is 
not to be successful, but to stand in the midst of wealth, 
the abjectest of the abject, the poorest of the poor. 

No historian ever found a theme in such a life, no artist 
could picture the desolation of such an existence, no novel- 
ist depict so bare a nature, no poet give to song the record 
of his being. 



Sncompetent IReaDinff. 

MEN known to write are vouchsafed more or less gra- 
tuitous and well-meant criticism from divers sources, 
but chiefly from two distinct classes — ^those who know just 
what to say, except that they are not in the "business," and 
those who disclaim the art of expression, but have the 
right ideas for the writer to adopt. 

Time reconciles the bread-earner of the pen to his infe- 
riority in these respects, but there is a third contingent 
which can never cease to be exasperating, namely, those 
who cavil through their incompetent reading. A quon- 
dam versifier known to me produced a striking exempli- 



232 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

fication of the latter class rather amusingly a short time 
ago. 

One of the hypercritical, who rolls his eyes and his r's, 
and loses no opportunity of appearing wise, was present 
and alert. The rhymester had been so often "called down" 
by this critic that he substituted as his own composition the 
lines that follow, reading them carefully in accord with their 
simplicity, after explaining that they undertook to express 
the culminating period in the activities of a good man's 
life, being suggested by the firing of a signal gun as the 
vessel he was aboard approached the harbor at dusk. The 
first stanza read: 

Sunset and evening bell, 

And one clear call for me. 
And may there be no sadness of farewell 

When I put out to sea. 

A pause ensued while the objector lodged several com- 
plaints. Then: 

Twilight and evening star. 

And after that the dark. 
And may there be no moaning at the bar 

When I embark. 

"A little better than usual, I should say," commented 
the objector. "But you fall short of your purpose. The 
lines are too abrupt, and are altogether figurative, a most 
intolerable offense where pathos is attempted. Consider 
what Burns, or Moore, or Tennyson would have written 
with such a theme." 

Later on he was told the truth, that Tennyson wrote 
them. Then he excused the laureate on the ground that 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 233 

it was one of his senile poems, which should be destroyed. 
And yet these simple lines are robed all 'round in immor- 
tality. They are peerless in the world's poetry of fortitude 
and faith. 

So, too, are they embalmed in pathos, and resonant with 
that peace which passeth understanding. Only a nig- 
gardly soul could fail to recognize this as a fitting close 
and crown to Tennyson's life work. Criticism often pro- 
ceeds out of the mouths of fools, whose praise or censure 
should be alike without regard. 



Clje €luerp of a Little (^irL 

THE mail to-day brought me a pretty inquiry, evidently 
from a little miss who has looked around her to some 
purpose and had her young sympathies stirred. 

The note reads: "Who would you help if you had 
money?" 

I would like to tell her that everything in the world is 
working out so harmoniously and happily, only a very, 
very few people need any help — so few, indeed, that I could 
tell her just who most of them are, and she and two or 
three little girls like her could go to them and find out 
what help they needed. Then the amount could be raised, 
maybe, right around her home, and that would make it so 
that there would be one city in America that could an- 
nounce to the world: "Nobody in this city needs any 
help." 



234 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

Unfortunately, her note hints at a truth so patent and 
so pressing that not even childhood escapes the knowledge 
that there is a great deal of want and other needs of assist- 
ance here, just as there is elsewhere. 

Her question is not very easy to answer, and I shall 
have to take my readers into confidence on the matter. 
Let us suppose that she is, as her note indicates that she 
deserves to be, the very apple of her parents' eyes, and that 
they have sufficient means to give her such sums of 
money as she may ask for in carrying on her little charities 
— not large amounts at all; say fifty cents one day, a quarter 
another, and perhaps a dollar at times. It is a sound 
maxim that charity begins at home — which doesn't neces- 
sarily mean literally under one's own roof, for there are 
roofs under which all things are good, and charity must 
walk forth to find a scope — but home has first claim on 
everything that is good in us. Next to the home should 
come the homes of friends, and next to them the homes of 
neighbors. After neighbors, the circle of benefits bestowed 
should be in the order of proximity — those nearest first. 
If this rule were universally observed, the burden of the 
world's charity would not only be lightened, but the sys- 
tem of relief would be perfect in its efficacy. 

Pride of locality is one of the finest elements in man; it 
centers around the homestead, and radiates thence in en- 
larging circles to country. It seems to me that the pret- 
tiest designation in the world belongs to the Quaker City, 
Philadelphia, 'The City of Homes." It abolishes pitying 
thought of the homeless; it has the fine sense of brother- 
hood. That is the great object of great minds to-day — to 
fraternize men — and when at last the world shall come to 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 235 

homologate the brotherhood of mankind, charity will be 
found to have been a doughty lieutenant in the knightly 
service. 

Alms-giving is a form of charity that I should not like 
to inveigh against. It simply seems to be inevitable and 
imperative, but it is the least salutary form of benevolence, 
and one to which we would hardly direct the attention of 
the little inquirer. All neighborhoods contain poor fam- 
ilies. In one or another of those lowly homes there is 
often sickness, and there are little things needed for the 
patient which the family is not able to provide. Par- 
ticularly if the invalid is a little girl, it seems to me no 
money in the world could do sweeter, more precious charity 
than to procure some little dainty thing for her. 

Next to helping some little girl whose lot even in health 
is not as bright as I would Hke to see it, I think the privi- 
lege of providing something for women feeble with age, 
whose long course of life has never been much in the sun- 
light, but in the chill of poverty and the gloom of old, 
unforgotten sorrows — to help them has ever impressed 
me as something finer than duty, a blessed privilege that 
addresses itself to the heart as an act of homage to one's 
own mother. 

The roses of a woman's life must fade and die; the altar 
fires burn down to ashes; the music and the rapture ceased 
long years ago. And if the one voice, the one face, the 
one companion of her whole life has gone before, leave 
her not to suffer alone, not utterly bereft. If it is no 
more than a cluster of flowers left by unknown hands, 
place them beside her, that they may lead her wandering 
thoughts back to the flower days of her life. If it be only 



236 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

a song, let it be one to revive some vanished joy, some 
ineffable remembrance more beautiful than the rest, which 
she hopes to dream of in the grave and to renew forever 
in that house not made with hands. 

These would I help — the invalid girl and the feeble 
woman — and may my little correspondent help them, that 
when she, too, shall be old and lonely, the ministering an- 
gels of the night shall comfort her and wipe away all tears 
from her eyes. 



Eoftert (^» KngersJolL 

THE man who draws a sword and attacks an army 
should be prepared to receive the thrusts of many 
swords. No man — not even the imaginary Drane of Caw- 
dor — has borne a charmed life. The persons and the 
minds of men are still assailable. Every human creature 
is vulnerable, even to mortal hurt. And he that fights the 
fiercest will be the fiercest fought. 

Colonel Robert G. IngersoU, animated and impelled by 
the most splenetic spirit of the century, attempted to run 
amuck through the organic body of Christianity. Chris- 
tianity still lives, however, and Mr. IngersoU is dead. 

Around the carcass of every mastodon, once sure of its 
death, innumerable vultures are sure to hold a ghoulish 
feast. 

Next to Henry Ward Beecher, Mr. IngersoU was the 
most Titanic figure of this generation in matters of religious 
thought. 

These two stood opposed, like David and Goliath, in 
implacable hostility. Mr. Beecher's life was spent in brae- 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 237 

ing the walls of the world's chiefest structure, which had 
clearly sprung out of plumb with intellectual analysis. And 
all the time Mr. IngersoU was bombarding those walls with 
indignation, logic, and eloquence. 

Professor Briggs belongs to that class of theologians of 
which Mr. Beecher was the forerunner, namely, those who 
hold that the critical errors of the church are only to be 
corrected inside the church. Mr. IngersoU, on the other 
hand, declared open warfare against the whole institution. 
Still, he strongly endorsed Mr. Beecher's course and, fol- 
lowing Professor Briggs' ordination in the Episcopal min- 
istry, declared the imperturbable Professor to be the fore- 
most thinker now left to the church. His encomiums of 
these clerical giants, however, are to be construed as 
carrying no further approval than he attached, in varying 
degree, to all men who repudiate orthodox theology. 

He believed that the whole structure of religion was built 
on false foundations. He abhorred falsehood infinitely 
more than he abhorred the devil. That is to say, that he 
detested what he believed to be falsehood. And as far as 
logic can be received as substantiating the truth of things, 
he certainly accomplished more than merely thundering 
in the index. 

Thousands of editorials appeared in the newspapers of 
the world in estimation of the value and harm of Colonel 
Ingersoll's life and labors, yet not one of these exactly 
defined either the harm or the benefits of the dead man's 
career. Least of all can this insignificant pen denote aught 
of the ultimate influences wronged by his fascinating mind. 

Perspectives are essential to correctly measure the force 
and the eiTects of an individual who has swayed, to some 
extent, the universal world of thought. 



238 THO UGH TS : By Brutus. 

It will not do for his devotees to overpraise him. Nor 
will it do for his adversaries to pronounce unjustly against 
him. His preachings have not perished with him, because 
they are vital with that spirit of inquiry which cannot die 
so long as the uncertainties that hem us in are not re- 
solvable into certainties. 

Mr. Ingersoll rested his case in open and avowed agnos- 
ticism. But the world will not rest its case there. Either 
the religious structure will be restored to its original form 
and finish, or it will be leveled completely to the ground. 

Agnosticism is exactly equivalent to inertness of mind. 
And the human race will never be satisfied with such paraly- 
sis. Either it will retrace its steps to Calvary and Sinai, or 
press on to the Dead Sea fruits of nothingness. The efforts 
of preachers like Dr. Briggs to inculcate the Scriptures 
allegorically, and not dogmatically, will fail, and fail utterly. 
The world will eventually conclude either that the Bible is 
a divinely inspired book, or else a compilation of fables. 

No real intelligence can compel itself tO' enforce beliefs. 
The mind once disenthralled of superstitious restraints, is 
the judiciary of our being, weighing in equal scale the pros 
and cons of every question. For centuries it has been 
half afraid to force the issues which it now seeks. 

Unquestionably much of the advanced thought of the 
present time has run against the self-same wall of agnos- 
ticism that barred Colonel Ingersoll's further way. It is 
right that every earnest seeker after truth should speak 
honestly, if he speaks at all. His conclusions can then 
be tried as to their worth by his fellows-men. This Colonel 
Ingersoll did, or maybe, as many think, overdid. 

Having arraigned the church so severely, his memory 
must stand merciless arraignment by the church. And the 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 239 

verdict of that tribunal is universally foreknown. It will 
be a verdict of outright denunciation. But that verdict 
will be unjust. There will be a rehearing in the after time 
when the wheat and the chafif of his teachings will be win- 
nowed to the smallest grain. 

Only just men should try such men as Mr. Ingersoll. 
By intention most men are just; in reality but few. "Tread 
on my toes and I will stamp on yours," is the practical 
maxim current in the world. And in the stamping a good 
man suflfers as though he were venomous and vile. 

Within an hour after his death was announced, a man 
said to me: "Ingersoll was a brainy man and knew how to 
trick the public out of a fortune." That man does not 
rate as a simpleton, but that remark shows him to be one. 
And so are all who can reason no better than that. 

Nobody would undertake to deny the consummate elo- 
quence of Mr. Ingersoll, and but few denied him great 
intellectual force. The two faculties united render a man 
of extraordinary value to any cause he sees proper to 
uphold. 

Naturally, then, the concession must be made that if 
Mr. Ingersoll had been merely mercenary in his motives, 
he would have chosen the popular instead of the unpop- 
ular side of the religious question. 

The American public, unless Mr. Beecher be excepted, 
has never contained an orator who could vie with Mr. 
Ingersoll. If he had suppressed his real convictions and 
joined the orthodox side, aided by his wonderful person- 
ality and his upright life, it is more than reasonable to 
assume that he would have gone to the forefront of popular 
favor. If so, his emoluments would certainly have been 



240 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

manifold larger than he acquired on the unpopular side. 
Therefore, it is folly to accuse him of seeking notoriety for 
the sake of money. 

Mr. Ingersoll was a bold and matchless advocate of truth 
as he saw the truth, but as relentless a prosecutor as the 
persecutors whom he assailed. The radical defect of his 
teachings, as we see it at close range, was in his denial of 
any good in the institution of Christianity. 

Whatever be true or false in its doctrinal teachings, the 
church has been a handmaid of civilization and the chiefest 
inspiration of goodness, morality, and the blessed hope of 
life beyond the tomb. Such an institution should be re- 
viled by none, but honored and revered by all men. With- 
out it the stars might well be hidden by night, and the 
very sun itself wander darkling in eternal space. 

Although religion were only a salve, how many wounds 
and bruises of the heart it heals; if only a dream, what com- 
posure and fortitude attend it; if only a hope, how it robs 
death of its sting and deprives the grave of victory! That 
there is much provocation to severity of censure against 
many acts and teachings of the church, I believe no liberal 
and informed thinker will deny. 

The history of the church is, in many instances, a record 
of cruelty, persecution, and blood — acts such as we can 
at this day in nowise condone. 

As long as men are imperfect, so long will human organi- 
zation, whether religious or otherwise, be also imperfect. 
But the good accomplished by the church so overweighs 
all that mars its record that even the men who can give 
no intellectual assent to some of its cardinal tenets, should 
uphold it for the good it accomplishes, and for the encour- 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 241 

agement with which it disperses the troubles of this Hfe, 
and the faith it lends to the universal longing after im- 
mortality. 

Mr. Ingersoll would have wielded a wider and stronger 
influence if he had been less radical in attacking the church. 
In fact, it helps more than it hurts a religious cause to 
deny it any virtue whatsoever. 

Such denial essentially includes prejudice, and prejudice 
is not the friend or ally of truth. 

The minds worth converting in this time are to be 
reached only by intellectual evidences and arguments. 
These must be free of any bitterness or personal feeling, 
or the advocate will fail of that hearing which he otherwise 
might deserve. 

Eloquence is of a twofold character — it must uphold 
justly, and particularly be just in its condemnation. 

In his mental makeup Mr. Ingersoll was not broad- 
minded and generous, but merciless and exacting. What 
he could not believe of positive faith, he not only rejected, 
but despised. And yet he was the foremost apostle of 
agnosticism — a state of nonbelief which justifies a larger 
silence, or at least more guarded and reserved utterances 
than those of Mr. Ingersoll. 

An atheist, who denies the whole scheme of revealed 
religion, both as to its application here and its possibilities 
hereafter, has a right to wage a furious and relentless on- 
slaught against all churches. But an agnostic who ulti- 
mately concludes, "I don't know what is," should exercise 
the nicest care in affirming that he knows what is not. 
Mr. Ingersoll failed in that higher propriety. 

(16) 



242 THOUGHTS: By Brutus, 

The capacity to love deeply ever has a counterpart in 
the capacity to hate deeply. This was Mr. Ingersoll. In 
his love of the beautiful he stood with the poets; in adora- 
tion of goodness he was an associate of the world's philan- 
thropists; in the championship of virtue he followed the 
decalogue; and in the extenuation of sin, the injunc- 
tions of Christ. Against wrong and oppression he was the 
prince of expostulators. To him charity was the music of 
life and love the sovereign blessing of the world. Nothing 
base ever soiled his affections or his mind. In him there 
beat no coward's heart, and treachery flew from the pres- 
ence of his conscience like a thing accursed. 

Let no scorner and no devotee invade and violate the 
sanctity of his private life, a life so fine, so high, that it 
was as free of reproach as the calm lustre of the northern 
star. His public virtues these: 

He loved iiis fellow-man, he cursed superstition and drove 
its sombre shadows back as some huge gale dissolves the 
clouds that hang against the sky. He held ignorance to 
be the only crime, and regarded sin as the weakness of 
those who, in the darkness and the devious ways, erred in 
their course. 

He believed in the brotherhood of man, in honesty of 
thought, in fearlessness of expression, and uncompromising 
hatred of a lie. He believed in cheerfulness, and the beau- 
tifying of life in every possible way At last Mr. Ingersoll 
has pointed the term of human strife, and I, for one, hope 
that on the low, dark verge of life he met the sunlight of 
eternal day. 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 243 



9@an anD ©10 iBeigblior, 

No amount of culture, of association, of travel, ever 
changes the mind from its natural yet peculiar pro- 
clivities. The infant in the cradle embodies faculties that 
are never to be transformed by circumstance, education, or 
any form of mental training. 

We are born with certain mental dispositions — each man 
different in kind or degree from all other men. We are 
capable of certain likes or dislikes, and there is no escape 
from them, even where the judgment strives strenuously 
to overcome apparent tendencies which it does not approve. 

There is such a thing as overriding one's inclinations and 
adopting a pursuit foreign to natural selection. And by 
extreme application men, in some instances, have forged 
further to the front in employments uncongenial to them 
than they probably would have done in an occupation nat- 
ural and proper to them — this because of a larger amount 
of energy than a congenial pursuit might have evoked. But 
those are emergency cases, and do not afifect the general 
truth that a man will do best in that employment which he 
likes the most. 

There is many a failure in life easily accounted for by all 
except the principal himself — he has simply not been honest 
with himself in determining his aptitudes. I knew two edit- 
ors who exemplified this self-deception; one acquired 
an enviable reputation as a pungent paragrapher; the 
other became a strong political factor through heavy edito- 
rial writing. Each became envious of the other, con- 
vincing themselves that they could excel the other in his 



244 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

particular faculties. The result was that two good writers 
ruined their careers out of sheer intellectual vanity. 

In other cases, in which mental vanity was not a factor, 
good men have been led to failure through the ill-advice of 
friends in luring them to pursuits for which they had no 
fitness. Once started in this error, the pressure of necessity 
has held them to it, with never a forward movement up the 
slope. 

A man cannot feel otherwise than grateful to his ad- 
visers, even though their counsel be amiss, but if he be 
acquainted with many sorts of people, he is apt to en- 
counter some ludicrously irreconcilable suggestions. This 
is not difficult to understand, for the reason that ninety- 
nine out of every hundred men consider themselves types 
of excellence by which other men should be governed. They 
never tire of magnifying their own real or assumed vir- 
tues, and, especially in reproaching some weakness in a 
fellow-being, it is their unfailing delight to say: "Now. 
instead of doing like you in this matter, I do thus and so. 
Why can't you do that way?" As though any man were 
a desirable criterion for another in a world where all men 
are burdened to the ground with imperfections. I fancy 
that the devil laughs every time he hears a poor human 
fool exalting himself as a model for other fools. 

This thing of sitting in judgment! It is the most exe- 
crable vice in the human composition. Yet all of us are 
addicted to it, and that not reservedly and in moderation, 
but rampantly and with the dictum of a Roman tribune. 
Whatsoever is not to our individual liking is bad, and our 
scorn is always for other men's faults and never for our 
own, albeit they hang thick over us like clusters of moss on 
the oak. 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 245 

Who among us does not know what France should do 
with Dreyfus? Who cannot show the mistakes of McKin- 
ley? Cannot the smallest among us hold the brain of 
Bryan in the hollow of his hand, and show which particle 
is sound and which is not? Do we not know which books 
of history are accurate and which untrue? If we join a 
church, is it not because we know that church to be right 
and all others wrong? The poets, the musicians, the actors 
— have we not infallibly discriminated between them so 
that nobody else's judgment is worth considering? 

As a fledgling I used to seek the conversations of cul- 
tivated men, under the belief that they would be discursive 
in their views. I found, as a rule, that tney were dog- 
matic, and talked not so much to exchange opinions 
through the medium of argument, but to declare them- 
selves as one speaking excathcdra — present not to hear, 
but to be heard; not listening to a dissenter, but waiting to 
impress on the others their several predicates. 

On one such occasion there was, indeed, an assortment 
of culture, and each man had his say about fiction. Never 
have I known natural predilections of mind to champion 
literary opinions more sententiously. One man was of a 
reflective turn of mind, and thought that fiction in its high- 
est form was as a mirror of philosophy, consequently he 
held Hawthorne and George Eliot to be the greatest novel- 
ists. Another was of a romantic bent, and heartily detested 
Hawthorne and Eliot and the whole tribe of moralizing 
novelists; he contended that Scott was the one great 
novelist. A third insisted that story-writing, pure and sim- 
ple, is intended only for women and children to read; that 
the proper literature for men is that which depicts life in 



246 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

actual phases, in the most vivid and impressive forms; 
therefore he pronounced in favor of Victor Hugo. 

Thus difference of opinion exists among all readers, ac- 
cording to their individual peculiarities, regardless of the 
inherent merits of a book. This is also true of all other 
differences of opinion among men, no matter on what sub- 
ject. The breeder of thoroughbreds holds a harness horse 
in contempt. The yelp of a hound is intolerable to a lover 
of bird dogs. The bather in the surf can't understand why 
there are people silly enough to hide themselves in the 
mountains. The woman who goes to prayer-meetings and 
funerals wonders, to her wit's end, why other women dance 
and go to theaters. 

From childhood to old age we continue bothering our- 
selves in wonderment that other people don't see how 
much better and more sensible than they we are. 

It is this sort of stupid individuality that generates the 
bickerings, the wrangles, the backbiting and the false rela- 
tionships of society. And if one will take the trouble to 
observe, he will find that the more pious and exemplary 
a person pretends to be, the more that person scandalizes 
and slanders others — a course that Christ exhausted the 
capacity of language to rebuke. 

Until men and women turn the mirror upon themselves, 
and let others alone, the flood of hypocrisy that pollutes 
the whole social fabric of the world will continue to settle 
its muddy waters over the otherwise beautiful domain of 
life. 

Or if one is afraid of introspection, let him keep a diary 
and set down in parallel columns everything bad and every- 
thing good that he says of others for a year, and at the 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 247 

expiration of that time let him assemble his friends and 
read the record. Then if he doesn't abase himself in shame 
and deplore the slanders he has uttered against his fellow- 
beings, there is no manhood in him. 

Throw away the standard of self in judging others; re- 
member that they are disposed one way, you another — and 
that God alone judges unerringly the quick and the dead. 



Cl)e Cfjeater in Q^orals. 

EMPEROR WILLIAM of Germany expressed his view 
of the theater recently, and the press of this country 
has seen fit to train the lilliputian guns of jest upon him as 
a theatrical commentator. His main utterance was: "The 
theater is one of my weapons. It is my duty to interest 
myself in it, for it can be made an immense power in my 
hands. The artists must aid me in serving the cause of 
idealism with firm confidence in God, and to continue the 
fight against materialism and un-German ways." 

The wisdom of this statement went like a terrific rocket 
far over the heads of hundreds of audacious, abominable 
writers, uncomprehended. When a man lacks sense to 
comprehend a sensible man, his process is to revile him, 
generally after the elegant way in which a tramp refers 
to a gentleman or a malcontent's rating of a man who ac- 
cepts life as it is and, enlisting with that principle, wins, 
because he is too wise to undertake the suppression of 
plans coeval with the creation and the fiats of the Creator. 

The stage is the most potent factor in morals of all 



248 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

public nonreligious institutions. It is beyond all question 
to any who have broadly sought to find the truth that the 
world is turning with dreadful precipitation to materialism. 
In materialism at last all the virtues must be consumed 
as in a fire. Without sentiment, there can be no sympathy; 
without sympathy, there can be no social regard; without 
social regard, lust and physical passions will stalk rampant 
and dominant. Precept is less controlling than persuasive 
and pervasive pleasures, which, seemingly as transient, as 
fleeting as the presence of a bird or the perfume of a 
flower, take eternal, forceful hold upon the conduct of one's 
life. 

I knew a man in this city as mercenary as Shylock and 
as phlegmatic in human emotions as though he were not 
human. Wealth became his, and one day love — a love he 
almost lost because he knew nothing of the gentleness 
which must correspond to a woman's tenderness if love 
abide. Hardened in the world's crucible of selfish gain, 
he had allowed to perish almost all the good in his nature. 

Scrupulous, but as uninteresting as a repulsive rock in 
the midsummer sun, his wife one day persuaded him to the 
theater. It was in the theater that she derived the only 
sustenance for a heart filled with a love of the poetry of life. 
The play was "Camille," and Clara Morris invested the 
character with a womanly charm and with a woman's agony, 
profound and awful in the culminating sorrow of her shame 
and death. That strange yet representative woman, in all 
but woman's unyielding virtue, fell, but not from wanton- 
ness, only from love and trust. In life there are few to 
pity and none to condone the tragedies which women sufifer 
through their love for men, their faith in men. But none 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 249 

with any good impulse left, possessed even of a modicum 
of generous sentiment, can see that play and not be more 
humanized and wiser for it. 

So with this hardened creature, this practical, unfeeling 
man. I noticed the effect of the play on him. He told me 
that It taught a lasting lesson and influenced his life toward 
sympathy for the erring and the distressed. A library of 
books, whole tomes of lectures could not with him have 
done so much. Emperor William has learned of the theater 
what the writer of these lines has learned, that it is a tre- 
mendous factor in the world's thought and in the world's 
morals. 



PertietteD Oseg of Superior <^\it%. 

IN this age of uncommon mental activity it should be 
clearly borne in mind that knowledge without justice 
is in reality cunning rather than wisdom, and that the 
application of laudable talents to ends not in keeping with 
the public good deserves the name of audacity rather than 
fortitude. 

There is ever prevalent in human affairs an amount of 
disorder in which men of intellectual genius are courted 
and importuned with valuable offerings for the conversion 
of their talents to causes at variance with the ends of virtue. 

The general admiration bestowed on men of talents were 
better restrained into consideration of the application made 
of those talents. If in the nicety of social ethics it be held 
as an unwritten law that rank imposes obligation, should it 
not in the general system of morals be held as an impera- 



250 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

live obligation that superior gifts be exercised in support 
of the virtues, and not be devoted to the success of evils. 

Sweep the plane of human activity with a bird's-eye 
view, and, if you be not impassive to the impression, you 
will be startled to find how much of the corruption, deceit, 
and crime in the world is intrusted, maintained, and suc- 
cessfully defended by men who pose and are accepted as 
ornaments, instead of being looked upon w'ith the abhor- 
rence which they deserve. 

Look into public ofifices, legislative, executive, and judi- 
cial — men of the best minds but rarely occupy them. Ex- 
amine the matter of social leadership, yea, even of church 
directory; is not wisdom oftenest the portion of the minor- 
ity. 

Particularly at this time, when there is no little unsettling 
of religious views among men of thought, the wrenching 
of old faiths and the substitution of incredulity tend to 
displace the moral balance in those whose sense of com- 
pensation is capable of overriding their weaker sense of 
justice. Any observant man can readily designate among 
his acquaintances men of this type. 

To literally typify a man of this character, let us suppose 
a person agreeable to look upon, with enough dignity to 
attract attention and with sufficient affability to be attract- 
ive. In the matter of his intellectual gifts he makes just 
enough of display to be impressive, and assumes an air of 
reserve that indicates mental resources sufficient unto any 
occasion that may arise. Having decided within himself 
against all spiritual teaching as the outcropping of super- 
stition, he considers his way clear of the debris which ob- 
structs the paths of men of faith. He does not impose a 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 251 

total eclipse on his conscience, but he does inherently 
ordain that his mind and not his conscience shall find the 
avenues of his employment. 

Thus, for instance, if he be a lawyer, and two contending 
claimants desire him as counsel, he will determine the dis- 
posal of his services not according to the equity of the 
case in the scales of ordinary justice; but, first, he will 
w-eigh the stipulated or probable fees; second, the chican- 
erv. or, as it is more politely termed, the technicalities 
which may be made effective in the litigation. Likewise, 
if it be a criminal prosecution, where assassination is 
charged, it is not the protection of life or the welfare of 
society in any respect which decides his employment for or 
against the commonwealth, but the amount of the proffered 
fees. 

One in extreme penalty wall bring to bear the largest 
inducements which he can command to retain superior 
counsel. In the case supposed, he is thus retained; where- 
by, while not violating the ethics of his profession, he yet 
brings to the support of crime whatever adroitness and 
cunning he may possess, to the subversion and shame of 
the public good. In legal walks this service goes in the 
common catalogue for honor. 

This evil in the law is here cited, not as especially derog- 
atory to that profession, but for the reason that the applica- 
tion is nearer the public understanding. Let it be under- 
stood, however, that in other intellectual departments of life 
knowledge is turned into equal abuse, and with equal impu- 
nity from public censure. 

In the department of art there are painters of eminence 
who are at last mere hired servants for the dissemination 



252 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

of that which is degrading their art. So, too, with actors; 
men and women eminent in the play-house engage in 
representations of polkition, and, indeed, in many forms 
of vicious acting, according as their managers find profit- 
able markets in the vulgar appetites of the public. 

Think how the sources of refinement are thus rendered 
agencies of evil, generation after generation, age after age! 

If instead of the countenance afforded by the generality 
of mankind to these perverted uses of talent, the public 
conscience were quickened to proper esteem of the pur- 
poses, as well as the applications of uncommon gifts, the 
evils here noted would be susceptible of abatement, if not 
entire suppression. 

It is an a fortiori presumption that the possession of laud- 
able faculties inclines one to the service of which is good, 
rather than evil, and, therefore, when we find instances to 
the contrary, we should resolve to withhold our admira- 
tion, not only that we shall not in any wise be parties to 
the injury wrought society, but that the pervert be thus 
informed that no man can be held in honor and esteem by 
honorable and estimable people whose talents, no matter 
of what particular bent, are so applied as to be divorced 
from the conscience of worthy enterprises. 



JFijeD purpose* 

THE surest way to happiness or, failing that, content- 
ment, is to form a fixed purpose as the focus of one's 
life, and train every faculty to its accomplishment. Put 



THO UGH TS : By Brutus. 253 

by all things whatsoever that tend to divert from that cen- 
tral object, and crush any conflicting desires which put 
one at cross purposes within himself. 

No matter what the undertaking, try to excel in it. Bear 
cheerfully in mind that those who have wrought best in 
human affairs have been in most instances surrounded not 
by advantages, but disadvantages. 

Charles Lamb made essay writing his life work. Mad- 
ness was the inheritance of his family; it enveloped his only 
sister and constantly hung its shadow over his own mind. 
The only joy in his life was his love for that demented 
creature, and the intensity of his devotion but agonized him 
the more that she moved in immedicable madness. With 
only bleakness in his own life, he determined to labor for 
the cheerfulness of others. He persevered in that purpose 
and gave the world the most delightful essays in any 
literature — essays which have given balm and stimulation 
to many a dejected life. 

It is not pertinent here to specify any of the cases in 
which men through tenacity of purpose have grown from 
lowliness to greatness. It isn't the purpose of this article 
to encourage Utopian ideas of revolutionizing one's estate 
in life by miraculous advancement. It is the rule of life 
that men do not get far from the environments that con- 
front them at the threshold of maturity. 

But this is not so much because of natural impediments, 
or insuperable difficulty, as of lack of energetic purpose — ■ 
not vain-glorious striving after improbable and impossible 
things and illusionary surroundings, but purpose based 
on a common-sense computation of one's abilities and due 
reckonine of the conditions to be confronted. 



254 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

Think highly of what you do, and you will come to 
do highly. Don't place a premium on the lot of other 
men and discount your own. If you are barred from the 
avocation most desired, do not resolve your life into failure 
— the capacity to succeed in a given pursuit implies sense 
enough to accomplish something on other lines. 

Put by despondency as you would an infected garment. 
Value life not for itself, but for the achievements you can 
put into it. Be not self-important nor self-absorbed in the 
sense that you are all in all to yourself, but nourish that 
pride of individuality which inspires energy and the purpose 
to do some worthy thing which will establish you above 
inferiority. Gauge yourself as scrupulously as you do 
others, and you may find much to mend which will be of 
large advantage. 

What a world of us conceal grievous faults from our own 
consciousness, or, recognizing them, defer the mending. It 
is well to view our faults as luxuries — costly luxuries, which 
we should determine whether or not we can afford. They 
are like imposts levied on a horse, which often cause him 
to lose the race. Life at best has handicap conditions, but 
it is folly to assume penalties of our own choosing. It is not 
difficult to discern the obstructions of a good purpose, and, 
discerning, to avoid them. 

Procrastination is the worst foe of purpose. There is 
a vast difference between purpose and intention. Enough 
time has been consumed in intending to do undone things 
to constitute a very respectable eternity. We are ever 
"thinking about" doing this, that and the other. It isn't 
necessary to "think about" any course of action so very 
much. 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 255 

People who are constantly complaining about not know- 
ing what to do show an intolerable lack of firmness, an 
indecisiveness of character truly pitiable. The real trouble 
is not in determining what is best to do; it is that we defer 
ihe doing. The vast quantity of energy lost through lack 
of definite, fixed purpose, could it be consolidated and re- 
stored, would well nigh accomplish the millennium. 



tHU struggle against ^ppoctigp, 

IN science, religion, government, and social relationship, 
the century is closing with an obvious retracing to the 
stronghold of the natural man. 

There is so much of good recovered in the movement 
that the observer is enabled to view it complacently, if not 
with approbation. Then, too, the fact of its being a gen- 
eral movement reconciles the altruistic mind to its direction. 
We are constrained to believe of what we call civilization 
that it is nature's motive power in the development of the 
human species. 

Therefore, if we concede that nature operates not through 
contingencies, but through design — that design being triune 
in wisdom, beneficence, and power — we must believe that 
the convergence of the higher departments, the funda- 
mental elements, of thought into a common course, toward 
a common condition, is essentially free in its eventuality of 
the perils of chance, and is impelled by the "one increasing 
purpose" that guides the universe to the great goal of 
good. 



256 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

With this assurance, the mind of man, firm-planted in its 
faith in ultimate results, may, with well-warranted inquisi- 
tiveness, probe into methods and into means prevalent in 
the conditions of the time. 

The world is wide, its population heterogeneous, its 
afifairs inevitably complex. Sudden and quick adjustments 
are unavailable in large afifairs, and the very scope of the 
changes which we perceive eludes harmonious solution. 

We are bafifled in our efiforts to reconcile the conflicting 
conclusions that address the mind, and, but for the re- 
flection that the vast drama has many acts, our act being 
related to the whole in a way which we cannot hope ever 
to understand, we might well abandon the mind to the 
rude bufifets of acute pessimism. 

But when we bear in mind that the races of man have 
developed, and that large movements have carried evil as 
well as good with them, we can contemplate the mixed 
movements of our time with some degree of equanimity, 
knowing that "the web of life is of a mingled yarn — good 
and ill together" — and that all the ages have borne the 
brunt of evil along with their reforms and their advance- 
ments. 

Thus reassured, we can consider the reverted movement 
to the natural man with some degree of discrimination — 
finding, as we shall, much to gratify and much to dis- 
gruntle, but in their sum of evidence manifesting man's 
increasing insistency of purpose, persistency of strength, 
and prodigious expansion of mind. 

Savagery is a structural element in the human species. 
Therefore, it will never be eliminated — no more than in 
the physical structure any of its organs will be eliminated. 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 257 

Civilization is the moral element of art. Art has the at- 
tendant evil of artifice. Artifice engenders hypocrisy. Hy- 
pocrisy is the rank weed that chokes the finer growths 
of man's habilitation. 

Against hypocrisy all the moral senses and forces of the 
race must be brought into allied use. 

This is the supreme struggle at the close of the nine- 
teenth century. It is a struggle so racial, and, therefore, 
so vast that it is concealed behind interminable struggles 
of minor degree, all of which are to subserve its ends. 

Religion, government, social relation, and individual wel- 
fare, all are choked by hypocrisy. The world is living on 
false lines. Existence is a harvest to the hypocrite, a 
burden tO' the upright man, a moral curse to woman. 

If there be a Creator, and purpose in the creation, false 
conditions will be swept away, and man's destiny carried 
on to fruition, and not decline in failure. 

Our strength is in man natural — hence the reversion to 
his estate. Through that strength hypocrisy will find its 
death. 

Beauty, refinement, the aesthetic qualities will sufifer in 
the conflict. That conflict involves the well-being of man- 
kind and is worthy of all the sacrifices it may require. 



a piea for tbe Litiing* 

THE world is strangely fashioned in certain proclivities. 
One of these is that it is so much more generous to 
the dead than to the living. It can be of no consequence 

(17) 



258 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

to the dead in that dread realm, beyond the earshot ahke 
of censure or regard, whether their memories stand ap- 
proved or disapproved in the flawy judgment of mankind. 
But to the Hving that estimation, faulty as it is, is of such 
moment that none escapes the sense of its significance. 
The extremest villainy goes not so far as callousness of all 
human regard. Somewhere, somehow, in every form of 
life the desire to be liked prevails. 

The primrose by the river's brim, given expression, could 
but be grateful to the daring lover who should snatch it 
from its stem as a beautiful offering to one more beau- 
tiful. 

Once I was told of an old mother who, in an evil place, 
attended as far as human feet may go on the journey that 
ends in death the young woman who called her "mother," 
and whose pitiful life was due to perfidy not her own, but 
his for whom she would have plucked from their loftiest 
heights all honors, all renown, and not have degraded him 
for all the triumphs of the world; and as the disconsolate 
woman sat in that appalling vigil by her child, the eyes 
once undefiled turned in piteous pleading to the mother 
who held her close and whispered in tones that must have 
prevailed beyond the tomb, "My child, I see no sin in your 
dear eyes." So that frail creature died in peace because 
one woman absolved her from her sin and loved her. Once 
dead, those came and gave her Christian burial who would 
not in her heartsick, famished life, extend to her so much 
as Christian greeting. 

Once I wrote in this column of a aead man who failed 
of capacities beyond the level of the herd who censured 
his weakness and ignored his strength. Hardly had he 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 259 

made acquaintance with the grave before men, and women, 
too, came to me wdth commendations for the feeble efifort 
to put away from his memory the reproach which they 
had persistently put upon his life. 

Man's record ends with death. Beyond that we can 
neither make nor mar. But this side we can do either. 
And the misfortune is that we oftenest do the latter. Why 
can we not be content to deplore one another's weak- 
nesses and stop short of censure? Abuse is the most impo- 
tent corrective in all this world. 

I knew an old grandmother whom God had made per- 
fect. Excepting her, a perfect creature I have not known. 

Humanity should be a mutual toleration society, and 
censorship should be an individual quality applied to one's 
self. Man develops through the approbation of his fellow- 
man. In so far as he is on trial before that tribunal while 
living, it is right that the trial cease with his life, but inas- 
much as he is strengthened by commendation, and dejected 
at lack of it, whatsoever of good can be uttered concerning 
him should be said to him, and not about him after he is 
no longer a part of us. Just as sympathy gives encourage- 
ment, praise begets perseverance. 

As it is, the world stands well-nigh aloof from the indi- 
vidual and leaves him entirely to the accomplishment of his 
particular enterprise. The problem of his success or 
failure is his alone to solve. If he be masterful, all well 
enough; if somewhere weak because of some defect that 
rquires outside remedy, there is no particular concern, and 
it is likelier that the defect will arouse more censure than 
all his virtues and his excellencies praise. This should 
not be. Mayhap, the aggregate is so employed in restraint 



26o THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

of its own iniquities that there is lack of time to cheer or to 
uplift another, and certainly the general provision of indi- 
vidual responsibility is wisely and unalterably fixed. 

Only there are innumerable sources of helpfulness to 
others, in us untaxed and costless, that the neglect of not 
applying them stands like an indictment against humanity. 
The accusation lodges not against the Creator, but the 
creature, for the natural proclivity that attaches as the 
counterpart of selfishness is to aid another where it does 
not deprive one's self. 

When men and women learn to encourage their fellow- 
creatures, and to remember in the presence of another's 
fault their own, calumny and traduction will disappear 
from the earth and human frailties will diminish. 



Wiz^W% MtSxs of ^ealtl)* 

INAUDIBLE monitors speak to us all. Wealth hears 
a voice in the night which it cannot refuse to hear, and, 
hearing, must consider. Imagine that voice to say: 

"The power of money to debase the conscience of man- 
kind exceeds in evil fruits all other iniquities combined. Its 
aggregated growth gives it a stature that reaches above 
the timber line of common men, and out of sheer loneli- 
ness and sublime audacity wealth has resolved: To this 
heighth of desolation will I bring and transplant the healthy 
growths below — transplant them that I may be a true ag- 
grandizement, for what am I if left to be a hermit, obscure 
from admiration and unpossessed of power? 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 261 

" 'Rather than such isolation from my fellow-kind who 
strive beneath, knowing not why, knowing naught but the 
necessity of striving — here will I assemble the great of 
earth, the wise, the good. Poets shall touch their harps 
for my advantage, art disclose the treasures of the past and 
employ the palettes of the present; music and handiwork, 
every accomplishment pleasing to eye and sense and mind 
between the oceans and beyond their tides — these, all these 
will I procure and consolidate in grand concert. 

" 'Yea, there shall be continuous entertainment as pro- 
logue to my play, whither shall come lawyer and states- 
man, magnate of traffic by sea and master of traffic by land, 
planter and artisan, and following these all the consumers 
of the world, the helpless, the suffering, the tempted, the 
fallen — all shsll come and bow to me.' " 

And then what? 

"Why, then," says Wealth, "have I not bought them 
with a price; are they not mine?" 

"And this you call a play?" inciuires the voice heard only 
by Wealth's subtle ears. 

"Certainly, a play — what else is possible to be made of 
such a jumble of materials? 

"If the immeasurable quantity of life-elements was related 
to harmony at all, a master such as I might rather choose 
to return to the valleys of their natural selection, and with 
earnest aid apply his acquisitions for their profit, and every- 
thing w^ould be serious enough. But what would it boot 
the great rivers of the world to yearn to irrigate the vast 
bosom of the earth? 

"Drought is as much ordained as irrigation, and the fer- 
tile soil is the plaything of these adversaries. 



262 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

"The oyster imbeds himself in shallow places to prey 
on other life, and, when he has fed full, man robs the sea 
and eats him. In the mid-ocean's waste monsters depredate 
their lesser kind. In the jungle wild beasts dwell in mortal 
rivalry, trying which one shall die. 

'"And man — where does his sincerity begin, how progress, 
how culminate? The child deceives his mother; the youth 
betrays his sweetheart; the man cheats his friend, murders 
his enemy, regards every object of life and property his to 
feed on, as much so as a horse feels at liberty to maraud a 
pasture. 

"Who protests? A solemn few, who are laughed at and 
pushed aside. 

"Suppose one of gentle nature grows sick at heart and 
turns, dejected, from the spectacle — scorners cry out, 'Don't 
you object; come on and serve the devil like the rest of 
us.' " 

"I ask again," says the inaudible voice, "call you this a 
play?" 

"What is a play but a mockery — what is mockery but the 
abstract and brief principle of life?" 

"So in order to aggrandize yourself," says the voice, 
"you hallucinate your conscience with the belief that the 
integrity of men, the purity of women, the supremacy of 
love, the agony of grief are insubstantial — such stuff as 
dreams are made of; that it is right to buy and sell others 
into the infamy of moral bondage if it subserves your 
ends?" 

"I mean," said Wealth, "that all life preys on other life. 
Omit your meals awhile; be sorry that animals must be 
butchered for your sustenance, that the growths of the soil 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 263 

must minister to your strength — let hunger gnaw you sufifi- 
ciently, and you will die. But you decline the issue. So 
is it with me. Avarice is my hunger, accumulation my hus- 
bandry — men my lawful and consenting subjects. Beyond 
this I reason not. If men would not sell, I could not buy. 
'"So at last, if wealth is an evil to mankind, mankind 
is an evil to itself, and no release from my domination 
can be had unless the great body of men become incor- 
ruptible." 



Doeis (^tatituDe OBngenDer Lotief 

IN a current essay Max O'Rell considers the question, 
"Does gratitude engender love?" 

His conclusion is: "Not only gratitude does not en- 
gender love, but it will stand in its way." 

In support of this view he declares: "A woman will 
often hate a man who lavishes money upon her, and will 
love the first man who comes along to whom she will owe 
no gratitude, simply because the former degrades her by 
paying for her favors, whereas the latter enables her to 
regain her independence and to raise herself in her own 
estimation." 

Max O'Rell is among the happiest of essayists, and his 
insight into the origin and disposition of the affections 
is good, as well as delightfully sympathetic. He is not, 
however, quite as felicitous in the foregoing expression as 
in such matters he is wont to be. 

So long as a woman "hates a man who lavishes money 
upon her and will love the first man who comes along to 



264 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

whom she will owe no gratitude," she manifests ingrati- 
tude and immodesty, on the one hand, and only acquies- 
cence — not love — on the other. 

This being true, Mr. O'Rell draws a general deduction 
from an anomalous example. The woman he postulates is 
not representative, but singular and inferior, and conse- 
quently cannot represent woman in general. Thus by a 
faulty example he obliterates his argument — which, how- 
ever, does not disturb the truth of the primary statement 
that gratitude does not engender love and may even stand 
in its way. The truth of the statement is shown in the 
variety of its exceptions. 

It may be added that exceptions must be allowed in any 
general view of the affections, either of man or woman. 
Of all would-be masters of human destiny, none exercises 
so many vagaries as love. 

Nevertheless, there are certain generic predispositions of 
affection between man and woman that afiford a basis of 
general conclusions concerning the natures of both. 

First of all, we know it to be universally true of women 
that the sweetness of love to them is in being won — they 
know not, care not, think not how. It is the thrill of a 
gentle, inexplicable confusion, amounting in a way to rapt 
bewilderment, leaving them startled, yet entranced — a dis- 
traught capitulation, a happy, joyful consuming surrender 
to the music of a name, the rapture of a presence, the dom- 
inance of a voice, the ecstasy of a touch, a sudden and per- 
fect paradise. 

By this is it meant love at first sight? Certainly, in many 
cases; in others, no. It is no test of love whether it burst 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 265 

suddenly as a light in the darkness, or slowly possesses the 
heart like the dawn of the day in the purpling east. Love 
is love — blessed be its name! — whether it be discovered by 
instant revelation or be disclosed as the rose from beau- 
teous bud to perfect blossom. 

Who that has loved suddenly would not fain detain and 
distribute the unparalleled hour into eternity? And who 
that has wandered out of dreariness and the dark, seeing, 
yea, feeling, the star-shine and the night disperse, and the 
soft transfusion of the dawn irradiate the whole circum- 
ference of his life, and not yearn that all but the swelling 
rapture of their love be swallowed up in huge and instan- 
taneous eclipse? 

Does love like this know considerations? What has 
gratitude or hate, friendship or all natural affections, to do 
with a dual drama like this between the heart of a man 
and the heart of a woman? 

In all worthy natures the quality of gratitude obtains, and 
probably through the medium of one or many helpful acts 
a woman acquires insight into a man's character, and 
through and for that character comes to love him — but 
gratitude plays no further part in the affair than being the 
medium of introduction. 

So long as the man's love for her has no other advocate 
than her sentiment of gratitude, he urges a losing suit — 
let him be assured of that. Were his own nature of fine 
mold, the chances are that where a man fell in love with 
a woman on whom he conferred benefits, he would conceal 
that love from her, lest he incur her hate by seeming to 
presume upon her gratitude. There never lived a woman 
who could highly esteem a man who would seek to marry 



266 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

her until she gave him the confession of her love. He 
must win her in the arena of love, not woo her in the sanc- 
tuary of gratitude. 



Ctoo CiDal matje0. 

OVER the island city of Texas the tidal wave of the 
elements sent dreadful blight, but to-day another 
tidal wave sends blessing — against the ruin of the sea, there 
hovers over and enwraps Galveston the sympathy of a con- 
tinent. And such as her needs shall be is the help at her 
hands from every quarter. 

All nature has wrath — even the hearts of men. Famine 
and flood, earthquake and pestilence, volcanic fury and the 
lightning stroke all obey the impulse of destruction. To 
these are added the armies of men, whose eager blades 
seek on every coveted field "to bathe in reeking wounds 
and memorize another Golgotha." 

These are the terrors of the world which millions face. 
But the spirit of disaster, not content with such dread 
allies, besets the common paths of men with covert adver- 
saries such as none can count. 

Seas have their monsters, rivers their reptiles, and the 
deep woods wild beasts and birds of prey. These the many 
escape. But who escapes the perils of penury, the oppress- 
or's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the thousand nat- 
ural shocks that flesh is heir to? 

Sudden and large calamities appall and feelingly per- 
suade us what we are. The gates of our sympathy are 
raised and help goes forth. 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 267 

But men are too busy to pause long over distress. Even 
poignant, personal griefs must be put aside, and, though 
the heart be prone to linger by a grave, the mind hears 
the call of the world, "Come on," and the grave is left with 
its dead. 

It may be better so. And it may be well that the pause 
is brief over a general calamity — no longer than to help the 
suffering. But just as suffering instructs the individual 
man, so reflection over calamity should broaden the sense 
of fellowship in communities and cause men to realize that 
large disasters are only exclamation points in the book of 
the world's experience. 

The sum total of daily unnoted misfortunes is sufificient 
to make small the destruction of a storm. 

Men are forever helpless against the fury of the elements 
and the course of accidents — they must bide the issue as it 
comes. But are they helpless against the adversities of 
human making? Does not the daily current run a most 
haphazard course? 

Between great afflictions, shall our sympathies fall asleep 
and pass the intervals in mere oblivion? Why do we await 
the summons of the riot bell to frighten us from security, 
whilst evils every hour pass by in easy reach of reforma- 
tion, and why be insensible to the sorrows that daily wound 
our ears for pity, until that time when the dreadful wail of 
a multitude recalls us into the presence of tragedy to behold 
it in appalling mastery, its fury accomplished and complete? 

If there be a lesson in the dismal story from Galveston, 
it is not to bemoan awhile and then forget, but from the 
hopeless horror turn to the needs, the sufferings, the griefs 
around us, and minister unto them. 



268 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 



JLotie anD JFortituDe. 

TVJATURE is prone to diffusion. For fragrance and 
^ ^ beauty we must seek first her flowers; for song, her 
birds; for daintiness, her jewels and her pearls; for love- 
liness, her femininity. But in a moment of prodigality she 
combined all these and added love and fortitude — and lo! 
there was woman. Death sometimes means release. Pain 
can be endured, and for a long time — by woman. So, too, 
can she repress aspiration and the unavailable capacity that 
underlies it. But there comes a time when even faith will 
falter, and the body faint. To men, this means rebellion; 
to women, resignation. It is strange to a hardened man 
of the world what an unspeakable serenity comes to the 
woman who suffers, and cheers, and waits — waits, for what? 
It is a thought that appalls an adventurous mind. But 
blessed forever be that gospel which sustains a poor, for- 
lorn mortal in the dark hour, in the dread hour, saying, 
"Fear not. Lo! I am with thee, even unto the end." 

The few lines which I add were written by a woman 
whom I knew, and were her last, going to the printer only a 
little while before she went to the grave. I offer them with 
the hope that they may breathe as beautifully of paradise to 
those who read them as they do to him who undertakes to 
lay this unworthy chaplet upon the record of her life. 

"Standing once, young and joyous, she looked forth and 
beheld a narrow way, steep, rugged, hemmed in like a 
canyon. It led always up hill and was carpeted thick with 
Scotch thistles and the needles of the thorn tree. A voice 
full and imperative said to her, 'Yon is your way of life; 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 269 

walk in it.' She cowered, rebelled, refused. She said, 'No 
human feet can tread those thistles and not bleed. No 
human strength can always climb a rugged, thorny path — 
I shall faint and bleed and die.' Sternly a voice said, ' 'Tis 
the path marked out for you; go in it.' And she went 
among the stones and briars, but as she went an angel 
stood before her and began to clear away space for one 
foot, then for another foot, and so on — never more than 
one at a time. At last she turned to see how far she had 
gone, and she saw the Saviour at the beginning of the path 
pointing the angel where to brush a way for her feet. She 
said, 'Is this the way, my Father?' and the answer came 
back : 

" 'Tis my child; 

Thou must pass through the dreary tangled wild 
If thou wouldst reach the city undefiled — 
Thy peaceful home above. 

"So sorrow and anguish and physical pain may press 
always against the heart, making it hard for us to be cheer- 
ful, yet by renunciation, prayers, and long control, there 
will come sunlit serenity, an Eden of fragrance and song." — 
"Sophy Sparkle." 



I^ppocri0p anti Sentiment* 

THERE was a time, according to books that cannot be 
discredited, when conversation was the monarch of 
society — a monarch beloved of his subjects, both high and 
low. 



270 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

That monarch has gone to rest, and hypocrisy is his 
successor. This latter ruler is the curse of the world. He 
causes veritable monarchs to embrace, to utter friendly 
expressions, and to deal in costly formalities as tedious as 
they are false. He has led into offices of government men 
who had no other chance to be there than as adepts in 
dissimulation. 

So successful is his sovereignty that it affects religion, 
politics, commerce, and the personal relationships of the 
world. 

Materialism is the treasury from which this monarch 
draws his funds. 

It is not money before which the v/orld bows down, but 
the two deities, power and necessity. 

Like a mistreated inmate in a hospital, who is afraid to 
complain from fear of worse mistreatment, men are afraid 
to confess their honest thoughts; afraid to pursue their 
inclinations, and many reluctantly stand off with the mob 
of ignorance and deceit and throw stones at some adven- 
turous mind less fearful than their own, all the while de- 
sirous inwardly of being where he stands. 

So it has come about, through this degeneracy, that 
hand-shaking is oftenest a counterfeit ceremony and con- 
versation the concealment of thought. 

Last night a gentleman of prominence said to me: "I 
am giving my career to a calling that does not satisfy my 
nature. Why? Because I must — because I must have 
money — not money to gratify my simple tastes. It would 
not require much for that. But to discharge obligations 
which I assumed for others. Besides, I am a mature man 
almost turning into the declining lane of life. I am a man 
of sentiment. 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 271 

"Poetry is the food of my mind, the solace of my heart. 
But already I have hurt my welfare by not sufficiently 
concealing this fact. I am supposed to be a man of plod- 
ding, clear-headed connection with material concerns, and 
I must justify that supposition the best I can." 

That man pities himself, and I pity him. But this much 
can be said in very truth, against the idea that there is so 
little sentiment in the world, that a strong, mature man 
would be laughed at for admitting this; the world is full of 
sentiment. 

Social conditions are thick with scurvy, and those con- 
ditions must be met. But behind them the gentle stream 
of sentiment flows on, and everywhere along its marge the 
busy citizens of life stoop, in the dusk or in the dark, and 
drink of its soft waters. Ever and anon two of a mutual 
disposition and a mutual trust spend an hour in con- 
versation over this forbidden theme; disclose their thoughts, 
their feelings truthfully. This is about all there is of 
honest speech. 

And yet sentiment is the one thing of value in life. It 
stands between man and savagery. It is the mother of re- 
ligion, the birthright of civilization, the source and life of 
love. That it is a quality to be hidden and denied explains 
the dishonesty, the immorality, and every ill condition that 
degenerates mankind. 

Unless sentiment be restored against the reign of hypoc- 
risy, those who are unscrupulous will carry the race on to 
perdition, while the scrupulous wander, hopeless and op- 
pressed, seeking, through weary wastes of want, only 
oblivion. 



272 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

a Ca$e JTor pitp. 

IT is a touching story, that of the suicide of a young lady 
on account of disprized love. It is not a new story, 
and until the heart of woman is transformed it will recur. 
Also, the world will continue to regard such acts as rash 
and silly, and pass them by with a sort of contemptuous 
pity. 

It is, perhaps, quite right to take that view of it. But 
that view simply places the love of a woman as a subordi- 
nate thing in her life — to be put aside if it be unfavorably 
surrounded. 

That, indeed, is a most desirable recourse, and it is being 
widely put into practice, and it is reasonably certain that 
the human family will eventually have their affections wait 
upon their judgments. Natural impulses cannot forever 
resist coldly practical intellectual demands. But sentiment 
is not wholly so debased as yet, and love to many is still 
something more than a name. It will be, indeed, a for- 
tunate day for woman when the bestowal of her affection is 
not irrevocable. All other agonies since the fall of man 
are as nothing to the suffering that love has brought to 
woman. 

From the day a woman's heart is touched with love for 
a man, a thousand possible wretchednesses confront her, 
impossible before. At the very best, she buys what happi- 
ness may come to her with a price. 

Her severest disadvantage is that her affection stands 
apart from all volition, and does not wait to be solicited. 
So, at its threshold, it may be given in vain. Of course 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 273 

no woman will concede that she could love a man before 
she knew that he cared for her. 

Her modesty would deny it, but the meaning of it is that 
she would not reveal it until solicited. And truly many a 
one has turned her heart's devotion to the dark. 

No despair is so abject, so irremediable, as the woman's 
who loves, uncared for, and cannot cease to love. She may 
give her life in marriage to another, or turn it to the clois- 
ter, or the grave, or, better yet, to the generous deeds of 
uninviting duty, but time nor circumstance can abate 
the grief and gloom of all her after years. 

What, then, if in the first tumult of her loss she tears 
herself away perpetually from her immedicable hurt — who 
shall rail against her, pronounce as folly what she alone 
may comprehend? 

Judgment may well pause in such a case, and infinite 
pity entomb it amid the tragedies of life. 



JUST as a beautiful woman in distress will excite an 
interest and arouse a sympathy denied to one less come- 
ly, so will an impersonation of agony by Clara Morris 
arouse sympathetic emotions undeveloped in the presence 
of actual anguish. 

I sat by a man of wealth at the play of "Camille" one. 
night. The pathos of the closing scene — where, in the 
midst of loneliness, and want, and disease, and the un- 
speakable gloom of sin, the wrecked and wretched life 

(18) 



274 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

drew to an end — moved him to unrepressed emotion. Great 
tears of pity stood in his eyes and helpfuhiess was in his 
heart. Yet the distress was only imaginary. Within a 
week he declined to contribute to a small fund to return a 
rash young- girl to her people in a distant town so that 
she might be saved from the realities of "Camille." 

How many men have pitied the folly of Jefferson's "Rip 
Van Winkle," and stood ready to help him, only to rebuff 
the real Rip, who might, with kindly treatment, be re- 
stored to good citizenship! 

Some waif on the stage has aroused a kindly feeling 
in men who never speak otherwise than roughly to a news- 
boy. 

Given a play wherein two lovers outwit hard-hearted 
parents, the whole audience would fain shower rice on the 
refractory couple; in life they are ridiculed and obstructed. 
Compare the fate of villainy on the stage and in the court- 
house — we tolerate in the latter what we would hiss at from 
the stage. 

The hunchback in a play stands at the door of a fash- 
ionable church and is given alms. In life, the police would 
be asked to remove him. 

How strange — and deplorable as strange — that human 
benevolence feeds so largely on imagination, and is itself 
principally imaginary! I am afraid many city folks would 
be unacquainted with the sources and effects of human 
sympathies were it not for the stage. 

The eye is a potent factor in human charity. The pity 
of it is that, instead of directing its vision to the great throb- 
bing world of sin and suffering in which we live, its gaze is 
more easily attracted to the fantastic world, where nothing 
is but what is not. 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 275 



a Eepotter'0 ^torp* 

CHRISTMAS has come and gone many times since 
the night preceding the one with which these Hnes 
are concerned. A reporter told me the story. Word reached 
the office that a young woman had been found unconscious 
on the street and was conveyed to the hospital, where she 
died shortly after arrival. It was a case of suicide. He 
was sent to ascertain the circumstances. 

It was a woman whose career he knew. It appears that 
she had attempted to withdraw from her wretchedness be- 
fore by the use of poison, but somebody in the house found 
it out in time to have her restored. This time she made 
sure of it by trusting to the obscurity of a side street. 

A wealthy man about town was known to have been 
her friend, but there had been a separation, and the girl suc- 
cumbed to the alternative, which has overwhelmed un- 
counted thousands like her. Only, in her case, she could 
not defile her nature to the requirements of such a career. 

She had believed m the man who turned her affection for 
him to her overthrow, and, strange to tell, she left a letter, 
showing that even after his desertion she saw no igno- 
miny in his treatment, but considered it only natural that 
he should have tired of her. She still loved him, she wrote, 
and could not reconcile herself to the further degradation 
from which there was no escape. So she paid the last in- 
stallment on the man's sin, and went her way to answer 
to a more ec[uitable account than that imposed by human 
society. 



276 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

The man who accomplished this unregarded tragedy was, 
at the very hour when it culminated, in the parlors of a 
wealthy citizen, mingling with the favorites of fashion, seek- 
ing even a brief audience v/ith the charming creature of 
whom he was enamored. He intended to sue for her hand 
at the first favorable moment. None presented that even- 
ing, and, being disgruntled no little, he went down town 
and had a "bout" with some chums. The reporter en- 
countered them and told one whom he knew about the girl, 
and that one told our hero. 

The reporter said that it was only fair to add that the 
fellow seemed considerably "shaken up" for a little while 
by the announcement, but said nothing and continued on 
the rounds with his companions. 

The day of all days for gladness, for the gathering to- 
gether of those whose lives lie apart, but whose hearts are 
still indissolubly knit together; the day of giving gifts to 
symbolize the devotion which shows like a poor bankrupt 
in the poverty of words; the day when the artificial is put 
aside for the natural, when the shortcomings of a year are 
canceled, and a new issue of faith and hope substituted; the 
day when want obscures itself in corners, and sorrow, for 
the time, lifts up its head — such a day dawned on the world 
as an unobsequious procession moved from the hospital 
to the railway station. 

Perhaps half a dozen persons attended along the course. 
At the station hands that had never touched the pale ones 
within bore the casket to the car. The train moved out, 
bearing a gruesome gift to the parents who had welcomed 
her baby presence as a benefaction from on high. She was 
going back to them after the years that should have per- 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 277 

fected her in womanhood a curse from the perfidy of 
society. 

And he, the man who taught her to love him, to confide 
her body's integrity, her social honor, and every dear in- 
terest to his keeping — what part does he play in this motley 
drama? He dominated her life in its purity; why should 
he desert it in guilt? 

If the purity of women is the first consideration of so- 
ciety, why does society condone the guilt of the principal 
in its destruction, and crucify the accomplice? This man 
who did not so much as send the simplest chaplet to hide 
a little the black lid that shut out forever and gave to the 
worms the beautiful face that he despoiled — what of him? 

Why, in a little while he was married to the daughter 
of the wealthy citizen, and lives a prosperous and honored 
gentleman. The seduction of a woman who loved him 
lingers, if it lingers at all, in his mind as an episode in 
his life — not, as it should do, as a tragedy that should for- 
ever disbar him from the recognition of his fellow-man. 

And his wife! She must have known something of his 
past — what is to be said of a woman who knowingly joins 
her life to that of a man who, out of lust, violated the faith 
of another woman? Which of the two women is most to 
be scorned? 



WHEREVER two or three men are gathered together, 
whether it be under the shade tree in front of the 
grocery store of a small town, or on the corner of crowded 



278 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

streets in the city — no matter what the main topic, anecdote, 
wit, jokes, humor of one sort or another will creep into 
the conversation, either illustrative or on their own account. 

Perhaps some comrade has just died, and one of them 
is telling about his last hours. "Well, sir," another will 
observe, "talking about poor Tom reminds me of the joke 
he told about so and so." And then he will repeat the 
localized version of a joke that could trace its ancestry 
to one of the two which Noah stored in the ark. They \yill 
laugh and think all the kindlier of poor Tom for having 
told it. 

Of course it wasn't Tom's joke at all. Other people a 
thousand miles away were telling that identical joke. Now, 
whose was it — where did it come from? The story about 
the old man teaching his boy how to break calves by put- 
ting his own neck in the yoke with one will go down the 
ages. We have the story, but who had the fine sense of 
the ridiculous to make it up? 

The man who writes an immortal poem, or delivers a 
great oration, or paints a wonderful picture, is forever iden- 
tified with his production. But the men who furnish in- 
spiring anecdotes and pointed jokes and consummate wit 
are never known. They cast them ofif as exhalations to 
shine in distant climes and remote ages, and go their way, 
not knowing, perhaps, how excellently they have spoken. 

The best of such things are not in books — they pass from 
mouth to mouth through generations. But even from man 
to man they have no identification. They are public prop- 
erty. The speaker who catches a multitude with a good 
story doesn't even take the trouble to feel silently grateful 
to the unknown author who thus served him. The crowd 
receives it as his, and he "lets it go at that." 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 279 

The austerities and severities of life would consume us 
utterly but for the alleviations in the many forms of humor. 

The court jester is as necessary to a ruler as his coun- 
selor — perhaps more so. Not only this, the highest wisdom 
often finds humor the clearest avenue of expression. The 
masses can comprehend in comical and homely illustrations 
issues that would confound them in philosophy. Laughter 
represents the brighter side of human sympathy, as tears 
express the side of distress. 

And he who serves the one is as much a benefactor as 
he who serves the other. Perhaps he is more needful, be- 
cause the deficit in the accounts is on the mirthful side. 
Tears come without our seeking, but mirth is not so bold, 
and blessed is he who quickens it and sends it dashing, 
wave-crested, o'er the falls to break in rays and sprays in 
the depths beneath, ever refreshing and refreshed. 

We cannot know the origins of our fund of humor, but 
it is pleasant to realize that, without fame or reward, every 
man gives what he can to the sum of human pleasure — helps 
to dispel the ever-gathering gloom, to change the chill to 
warmth, and over all dejection to spread the sweet en- 
couragements of mirth. 



Cl)e lvalue of (aregariou0ne$0. 

Is it good for a young man to be in promiscuous content 
with the world? 
Yes and no. That is, it depends on what is shown in 
later years to be the constitutional attributes of the young 
man, mentally and morally. 



28o THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

It is the makeup of some characters to be merely trailers; 
they have no motive power in themselves; they are drawn 
hither or thither according to that with which they elect 
or happen to be linked. Promiscuous contact could hardly 
be recommended for them. Both in views and habits they 
are as likely to go wrong as right. It is a hazard — and 
risk like that is not good for ready followers. They cannot 
amount to much, anyway, and it is just as well that they be 
not turned out, but kept up, as it were. 

There is another kind of young man who should be 
turned out — the one gregarious in his nature. He does 
make himself amount to something, and promiscuous con- 
tact with men is the life-long medium of his growth. 

I do not believe that valuable knowledge of life, staid 
philosophy, or stoutly built character can be possessed ex- 
cept as they are gregariously acquired in the bivouac of 
assorted men. 

A deplorable deficiency in many lay and clerical teachers 
is their non-gregariousness. Wonder has not yet ceased 
as to the source of Sam Jones' hold on an audience. It 
comes from his promiscuous knowledge of men In so far 
as it reaches, it is knowledge, and is, therefore, a useful 
supplement to evangelization. 

It is deemed desirable for a young physician to have 
as many clinics as possible, so that he shall have not only 
theoretical but actual knowledge of bodies normal and 
bodies abnormal. Just so with a young man starting out 
in the world — he should know men normal and abnormal. 

It is through the study of variety that the power to dis- 
criminate is developed. Discrimination is man's most val- 
uable faculty. It is the essential promoter of intellectuality. 
Without it man would be the genus of imbecility. 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 281 

"But cannot his faculty of discrimination be sufficiently 
developed through the characters in books?" is asked. 

It were as easy to learn nature through the medium of 
art. It cannot be done. It is a wise saying that the proper 
study of mankind is man. His experiment station is the 
commons of daily life — where he is found on mansion ave- 
nue, or commerce street, in poverty row, in pleasure parks 
romping with children, in the church-yard digging a grave. 
We must believe that "nothing walks with aimless feet," 
that not one life is "cast as rubbish to the void," that every 
segregated entity of being contains a story. The by-laws 
of this world are made up of many sections, and every 
section has manifold articles, none of which is meaningless 
or null. This broad plaza of the mind is open night and 
day through all the changing seasons, and the vast sweep 
of years. It is a babel to some, to some as a mighty sea 
roar, and to others still a divisible yet united chorus that 
awakes, sustains, and beautifies wide days and lasting sym- 
pathies. 

Let not dry, barked, deciduous nature pass in through 
tlie portals of this confused plaza, for it would only be to 
their disgruntlement, but let the daring youth who seeks 
to know his kind be not afraid to enter there. 

Let him follow the hand organ along the streets if it be 
his disposition, that he may the better appreciate the or- 
chestra a little later on. Let him read dime novels in order 
that Scott and Dickens and Thackeray may thereafter teach 
him discrimination. It is better for him that his young 
affection rivet on some gay, deceptive flirt, who works a 
cure for all her injuries, rather than dwell in ignorance of 
love until that period when the heart can break. 



282 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

Ignorance cannot be a safeguard against anything. In 
every sound nature it should be despised, and not used as a 
shelter. In these days, as never before, good and evil both 
walk in the light. The eyes see them, and cannot avoid 
seeing' them. Therefore, it is of unspeakable importance 
that the mind shall instruct that vision, so that standards 
will be chosen, and discrimination arrest folly and debas- 
ing error. 

When standards are established, then can the grega- 
rious course give way to picking and choosing, for the 
mind has assurance of its own reliability, and he who was 
young and uncertain is mature and discriminative — the 
confident and enlightened captain of his career. 



l^umanitp anD !^a$t)« 

CONVERSATION takes peculiar turns. It is a com- 
bination not unlike the proposed operation of wireless 
telegraphy. Its nimbleness is such as to leap easily from a 
mole hill to a mountain, from a firefly to a star. Have you 
not known the talk at a dinner table to shift in an instant 
fiom a culinary topic to a fugue or a flower? 

In a group of half a dozen men, busy with the finishing 
touches of a dinner, cigars, and light talk, somebody said 
something about "human nature." 

"Human nature," one of them rejoined, "goes with hash 
— it is hash." 

Instantly all the others reached for a match, as though 
their cigars had gone out. Then there was puffing — and 
nothing more. 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 283 

While it is not easy to flustrate a group of men after a 
good dinner, it can be done, as the gentleman's remarks 
proved. 

Finally a certain Major rallied and said, "Explain your- 
self, sir." 

"It's hash; isn't that enough?" 

"By no means, sir. I am a fraction of human nature, 
and if you mean that I am an ingredient of a dish deserving 
the eschewal invited by that word, I demand that you sig- 
nify the intent of your startling observation." 

"The remark was unpremeditated, but not derogatory, 
as you apprehend. Therefore, I shall defend it. Hash, 
the dish, presents meat in its most readily assimilative form. 
Therefore, it is to be eaten, not despised. I should like 
to have a whack at the person who made the first sneer 
at that great upholsterer of the inner man. 

"I say that man is a hash-piece," he continued, "because 
he was made so. Singly, he is not only incomplete, but 
mentally, morally, and socially, absolutely indigestible. It 
is only in the general chop-up in the kitchen of experience 
that he is palatable or wholesome, even as an ingredient. 

"Do you know why it is that not anybody wants to swap 
places? It is not because of self-satisfaction, but because 
of defects in everybody. Each can palliate his own blem- 
ishes, but, to save his life, he can't understand the other 
man's. 'Why, a man with Bill Jones' sense acts as he does, 
beats me,' is figuratively an expression which every man 
who ever lived has used about some man, and, even as he 
spoke, some other man was wondering the same way 
about him. 



284 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

"1 honestly believe that no man ever acted as 'best man' 
who, with all loyalty of esteem of his friend's virtues, didn't 
feel that some other woman had yet a chance in him of 
doing a 'leetle better' than the bride of his friend. 

"Pride is one thing and vanity another. Pride not only 
seeks to foster one's good qualities, but to amend one's 
faults. Vanity parades one's virtues and one's faults with 
equal approbation. The difference between them is that 
between excellence and inferiority, between tHe sound man 
and the unsound. 

"Superiority, mediocrity, and inferiority — these are the 
three grades of human kind, and to get at the lump and 
body of humanity it must be chopped into hash, if 'good 
digestion is to wait on appetite and health on both.' " 

"Your view, then, is that man is not an admirable crea- 
ture staked off to himself?" 

"Yes, sir. You must take him in the aggregate if your 
bump of reverence calls for a human object. He is a 
failure as a fraction, but as a unit he beats the arithmetic. 

"Hereafter, then, when we call for hash, it is to be a 
call for closer fellowship?" 

"Exactly." 

"Agreed," said all. 



DrifttoooD. 

SOME men are essentially nomadic. They abandon con- 
ditions so propitious that the folly of their course is 
astounding. But the world attracts them. They must 
travel — the desire is irresistible to see all lands and all peo- 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 285 

pie. So they forfeit all restraining interests and go. Some 
have means sufBcient to indulge this inclination; others not. 
Without the requisite resources the nomad often comes to 
grief. 

As he descends the scale of want he is ever more easily 
pliant to the persuasions of the wine glass. At least he 
forgets all personal pride. Lower and lower he descends. 
Men begin to ignore and soon to scorn him. The worse 
his condition, the readier he finds solace in intoxicants. 
He knows the evil of it, but keeps on. Finally, it is not 
solace he seeks, but mere oblivion. 

In the meantime, many of the particular class here 
referred to have read much, thought much, learned much. 
Intellectually they are not debased. On the contrary, if 
they meet an appreciative man with a little sympathy in 
his heart, and not ashamed to lend a kindly ear to an un- 
fortunate vagabond, they sometimes disclose a fund of 
information, a delicacy of sentiment truly remarkable. And 
one can discern behind the dissipation and uncomely clothes 
the capacity of a fine nature rankly abused. But the ca- 
pacity is there. 

The fool who judges a man by the cloth he wears, spurns 
a poor wretch like that, and all the while the miserable 
mendicant outstrips the foppish fool like a Colussus. 

I heard two of these swells, who probably could not 
say how their State is bounded — these tailor-made idiots 
were reproaching such an unfortunate as I have tried to 
indicate. I was struck by his reply. Said he: 'T appre- 
ciate the compliment of your remarks, but I am aware, bet- 
ter than you gentlemen can possibly know, of my mis- 
doings, for I pay the tax. I would prefer to discuss with 



286 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

you the Iliad, but I am afraid you gentlemen have not your 
translations of that sonnet with you." 

I found from casual remarks between us that he had 
accomplished himself in languages, and in whatever city he 
chanced to be he sought out libraries and read the best 
books to be found in them. He read them with intelligent 
appreciation of their pith and substance. He is a foreigner, 
but employs the choicest English in his conversation, and, 
besides, possesses a strange and impressive philosophy 
lugubriously out of keeping with his circumstances. 

I believe that some insurmountable disappointment — per- 
haps a woman's rejection — made him a wanderer. His 
mental equipment is too fine for him to be of ordinary 
parentage, and he recollects the proprieties of better days. 

But men like him keep their own confidence as to afifairs 
beyond the reach of remedy. 

Some of us like to encounter odd bits of character. That 
is one reason why we go to theaters. But it isn't always 
necessary to seek them in plays. They often cross our 
paths in real life, if we are only quick to discern them. 

As I left, he handed me the following little lines of his, 
which he gave me leave to publish without his name: 

A WITHERED ROSE. 

Aunt Mary sits in her rocking chair, 
With bended form and milk-white hair; 
On her knees she holds a Testament — 
A loving gift from an old-time friend. 
The leaves of this old book disclose 
The remnants of a withered rose. 
What makes Aunt Mary always weep. 
When to that rose her fingers creep? 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 287 



Con0iDetation» 

IN a note opposing an article in this column concerning 
the sacrifices that women are capable of making, there 
is this expression: ''If men only knew that consideration 
for woman is the true foundation of love; no worthy, no 
true woman can love a man without consideration." 

The statement has an affirmative and a negative. I once 
knew a man who was a "social lion," but at home he was 
quite another sort of beast. He married a young woman in 
an adjacent city, and brought her to his father's house. 
The honeymoon had not waned before he hurt her to the 
quick by a rude remark about some slight disarrangement 
of her toilet. The utterance was made in the presence of 
guests. She would have been less hurt had he done her 
some bodily harm, for this went to her heart like a dagger. 
She continued to live with him several years, but she did 
not continue to love him. Finally there was a divorce. 
She was a thoroughly lovely woman, and lack of considera- 
tion by the husband caused him to lose her. 

I knew another woman of different disposition. She and 
her husband had been in love with each other since their 
youthful years. He was addicted to sprees, and these put 
him from his proper self. During one of his sprees he 
beat her. A servant informed her uncle, who had been her 
guardian as well, of the abuse. He went to the home and 
found things upset and demolished. The husband was not 
there. The wife was pitifully disfigured from his vio- 
lence. When her uncle questioned her about the affair, 
she said the house had been on fire, and that in the ex- 



288 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

citement she had knocked over things and hurt herself in 
falHng. 

She tried to obscure the truth for the sake of the men — 
and went on loving him. 

I was told of a man who heard the cries of a woman, 
and found her husband whipping her. He interfered with 
considerable violence, only to be told by the wife that 
her husband had the right to whip her if he chose to do so. 

Women are as dififerent as the stars — some must have 
consideration; others go on loving and being happy and 
wretched by turns without it. 

The riddle of the Sphinx is still unsolved, and so, too, 
is the riddle of woman. She is the most delightful mystery 
in the universe — but ever a mystery. This does not spring 
from any reserve on her part. She simply does not com- 
prehend herself. There are exceptions, many of them, but 
that is the rule. There are calculating women, such as 
marry for wealth or social distinction. I have no reference 
to them — I only call them women out of courtesy. 

The genuine woman oftenest does not know the re- 
sources of her nature only as those resources develop under 
the varying circumstances of her life. One thing is certain 
— there is nothing this side of paradise, nor there, either, 
comparable to the fineness of a woman's affection. 

Surely, then, the man who enjoys such a blessing should 
manifest in every possible way extremest consideration. 
Don't lift your hat with excessive politeness to other 
women and neglect that politeness to the women of your 
own household. If your wife be first in your affections, 
do not deny her the little attentions and tokens so dear 
to a woman. She should stand through a man's whole 
life in the forefront of his consideration and his courtesy. 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 289 

ance0ttp anD Qiarriage* 

\ S long as love is determined by impulse, and is hardly 
■^^^ at all influenced by volition, so long will its friction 
lie in the vast domain of chance. Indeed, under the most 
considerate system of selection, other uncertainties would, 
of necessity, succeed to those displaced. 

The agreeableness of untried relationships can never be 
ascertained by the application of fixed principles, and it 
may be that the dictates of impulse are the most trust- 
worthy indices of permanent congeniality. But so numer- 
ous and disastrous are the disappointments from this 
source, that it is well enough to consider some aspects of 
the matter not often brought to bear on the question of 
marriage. 

The attractiveness of the individual should be the prime 
consideration, but not the only one. The influences of 
heredity are so clearly established, especially in physical 
results and in temperaments, that they should bear strong- 
ly on the matter of matrimony. The manifestation of an- 
cestral influences is often late in developing, being re- 
pressed by a vigorous individuality, but, early or late, those 
influences are as certain of development as any well de- 
termined fact of life. 

Training and surroundings have first control of a person. 
As maturity approaches, habits begin to form, with the 
great potency that attends them. Then follow, slowly or 
quickly, the dormant influences of heredity. 

Unfortunately, weak points are apter of inheritance than 
strong ones. It is much more probable that a young 

(19) 



290 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

man of good qualities will, in later life, encounter any pro- 
nounced weakness in an ancestor, than that a weak scion 
will develop any pronounced strength through inheritance. 
The exceptions will not be found to disturb the rule. De- 
bilities operate at a greater ratio than normal forces. The 
main regard of ancestral proclivities and qualities, therefore, 
should be for the avoidance of latent defects. 

In considering a person's parents, physical attributes are 
of chief moment. Mental and moral transmissions operate 
at longer range, often from several generations back. There 
is, of course, less tangible probability in the course of 
heredity on the latter line than the former. 

Another corrallary consideration in the appropriateness 
of a marriage, from the woman's standpoint particularly, 
is as to the effects of environment in connection with the 
new conditions attendant on marriage. The life of a young 
lady is on hnes closely akin to the new condition — not so 
with the man. Marriage to him means the putting by of 
habits and interests wholly incompatible with a proper 
regulation of the new relationship. 

And it must be acknowledged, ungallant as it may 
appear, that love is not as easily instrumental in changing 
the current of a man's life as it is desirable to have it. There 
are associations and habits that cling tenaciously, and in- 
terests that persist in being attractive. Then, too, the 
question of amiability has to be considered. The gentlest 
suitors have developed into very fractious husbands. It 
is by no means certain that ardent pursuit will resolve into 
ardent possession. 

Marriage will continue to be an agreeable lottery, but 
those are likely to fare best who, with a due regard 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 291 

for the future, add to the impulse of afifection an earnest 
consideration of character, surroundings, and the probable 
influences of heredity. 



De0tinp of ^an, 

PURPOSE is so interwoven with the principle of life 
that we can hardly escape the conviction that nothing 
walks with aimless feet. Nature reconciles all things to 
their appointed ends. The universal protest against death 
in every sentient entity is so persistent that we can hardly 
associate with it the idea of defeat. Indeed, the simple 
forms of life resolve themselves before our eyes out of decay 
into recurrent being. We cannot say the flowers die, while 
from the bosom of the rose a newer germ survives the 
plant that bears it. The oak succumbs to time and storm, 
yet lives again in its own substance. In the forms of life 
composed of chemicals they reresolve to life again. If 
then the lowest survives, shall we believe the highest per- 
ishes? Ere man had yet evolved the faculty of reason he 
resisted the idea of annihilation and clung to his indi- 
viduality as indestructible. This intelligence has brought 
him to a perception of the mystery of creation, and in the 
tangle that has resulted from his conflicting efforts at 
solution, innumerable minds are disposed to disavow the 
inward testimony that supports the theory of immortality. 
The fact that man believed in the continuance of indi- 
vidual existence after death, long before enlightenment en- 
abled him to formulate an expression of the belief, let alone 



292 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

the assignment of reasons in support of it, his aspirations 
and his faith led both that way. This was instinct, the 
source of mental growth, which, of necessity, is more trust- 
worthy than the excrescent opinions which he forms based 
on analogies or any inculcated tenets of his own. Instiii'.t 
is an endowment of nature to preserve and promote life, 
and followed closely, without amendments of our own, 
leads unerringly to truth. Evidently the origin and destiiiy 
of man must ever remain inscrutable to finite comprehen- 
sion. Whatever physical benefits accrue from scientific 
studies of the creation, of which man is a part, should be 
utilized. But its utmost reach after the problems of exist- 
ence cannot negatively go beyond agnosticism. Man-made 
theologies have crumbled and must crumble in the crucible 
of knowledge. But our extremest wisdom cannot under- 
take to repudiate the instinct of immortality, which under- 
lies and upholds the whole of life. 



an SnciDent 

SHE was not as light-hearted as she managed to make 
herself look in the soft drapery of an autumn gown. A 
sense of neglect had, by infinitesimal degrees, stolen 
the tints that happiness implants on a woman's features. 
She would sit alone in the lengthening shadows of empty 
twilights of late, gazing toward a spectral shape that took 
form very slowly, but it was clear to her now, and she 
dwelt upon it with horror and affright. When a woman 
thoroughly realizes that her hold is loosening on the man 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 293 

who holds her love and Hfe in his keeping, the agony must 
quite exceed anw possible pain in all the after years. Such 
v/as her consciousness as she stood before the mirror, gaz- 
ing upon her own loveliness, a mute but eloquent protest 
against neglect. She could not bear the pain of any uttered 
remonstrance. Besides, remonstrance is not an ally of lov;. 
A man's devotion is to be held by a woman's attractive- 
ness, and his neglect overcome in other ways than by re- 
proach. She understood this. "He cannot fail to notice 
what a dainty robe it is," she mused, "and we are to have 
tea alone. Oh, it must be all my fault if something of the 
old enchantment does not prevail this evening. 

He came as usual, good-natured but indifferent. He did 
not seem to be aware of any extra ornaments. He knew 
that she was beautiful — she was always so, but he accepted 
it as an agreeable fact that called for no further expressions. 
He had assured her of it a thousand times, and to say so 
over and over would be tedious to her. So he made himself 
comfortable over the evening paper. 

"He is tired, poor fellow," she said to herself. "I will 
look to the tea myself, and afterward I will sing to him and 
we will be lovers again for the evening." 

It was a pretty scene as they sat alone under the soft 
light at the little table she had decorated so daintily, whilst 
she served the tea herself with quiet, delicious grace. She 
was putting herself to the test to-night, and he had never 
been so dear to her before as in this crucial hour when she 
so yearned to win him back to his old ardor. Many an old 
bachelor would have parted with a decade of his life to have 
sat in his place and been worshiped by such a creature. 
Something of the charm of the scene took hold of him and 



294 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

he made himself very agreeable, in a prosaic sort of way. 
She was delighted even with that, for it promised so well 
for the long chat they were to have after the music. Her 
heart beat violently as they moved toward the piano, for she 
was sure he would take her in his arms, and she felt that 
all the happiness of the past, yea, and all the agony, too, 
would be as nothing to the joy of being taken to his heart 
newly loved. But alas for the heart of a woman, and the 
indifference of the man who possesses that heart! 

He seated her coldly, only stooping to kiss her with the 
usual insipidity. What a pity he did not see the pallor of 
disappointment, the colorless white of heart-sickness that 
overspread her lovely face. She only sang one song, for 
her voice wavered, and the notes grew dim. With the 
quick fortitude of women she put ofif all outward sign, 
and as she rose he said, entirely unknowing the effect his 
words were to have, "Well, dear one, I suppose some of 
our friends will be in presently, and as I am a little late, I'll 
be off for an hour down town; but if it's two, don't be un- 
easy. I will be in good hands." 

Her first impulse was to throw herself in his arms and 
restrain him with caresses, to tell him how she loved him. 
and how wretched she was. But something held her back. 

"I was going to have ourselves excused to any callers," 
she said, trying to speak cheerfully. "I thought — thought 
— perhaps we might spend a pleasant evening together." 

"That would be nice, but this evening I am under a 
rather urgent appointment." 

He closed the door behind him, without a thought of 
the hurt he had inflicted. At the gate he remembered his 
gloves and, turning, re-entered the house. 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 295 

His wife lay on the great rug by the fire in utter 
wretchedness. Hers was not that strange tenderness which 
can deny itself to tears. He stood for an instant entirely 
perplexed. Lifting her from the floor he held her close in 
his arms, and she twined her hands around him as though 
to linger there eternally. As he looked down into her sad 
face, sad for the first time to him, the meaning of it all 
came to him, for his love was newly stirred and he stood 
convicted By it. 

He didn't go down town that night. The next day he 
slipped around to a store, and, with as much awkwardness 
as a boy in buying his first present for his sweetheart, 
bought her a wrap that would have graced a queen — and, 
according to his repentant judgment, does grace one. It 
was at once a mute expression of self-reproach and of an 
homage all the more ardent from its lethargy. 



CDe jFall of 3tiol0» 

IVTOTHING excels in excruciating regret the fall and 
^ ^ crash of an idol. 

For instance, in the course of the fantistic, fascinating 
talk of am idle hour, such as often develops among the little 
crew of writers who make up a newspaper, I was expa- 
tiating to-day with no small amount of rapture on the 
beauty of a young singer whose voice has given pleasure to 
thousands of delighted listeners. Across the deceptive foot- 
lights her hair shone with the soft glow of a sunset in 
June; her eyes fairly outsparkled the jewels of the night 



296 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

when only lovers' eyes behold them; her motions in their 
grace suggested a living Thisbe, and her voice — why, her 
voice fell with such exquisite sweetness on the ear that it 
seemed to revel in mockery of the nightingale. 

I was endeavoring to acquaint the crew with her excelling 
charms, when in she came, and in that coming smashed 
herself to smithereens, so to speak. Her sun-hued hair 
resembled frazzled strands of hemp, bleached to order by 
an immitigable bungler; those star-like eyes contained no 
glow, but only the sad gaze of a weary body, and the 
limpid voice was harsh and cold. 

With taunts that hurt like the reproaches cast on old 
Jack Falstafif because of his dissemblings, my workmates 
reviled relentlessly against the picture and the painter. 

Had she but stayed away, she might have been an idol 
evermore. But she came. 

This establishing of idols! How much it means! It is 
the search of the mind for truth; the quest of the heart 
for love; the pleading of the eyes for beauty. In it we 
find Nature striving to lift us into better, higher conditions. 
It is idealism, and idealism is the active force that directs 
the real, as a driver directs his horse. 

Electricity yielded its application to idealism. And yet 
there are those who see in it stern materialism. They view 
it askance, as the enemy of labor and an intervention of 
man's against natural laws. It is no such thing. On the 
contrary, it represents to the physical being what poetry 
represents to our mental being. 

Ask the busy china merchant on Broadway, whose wares 
come from Europe and the Orient, the value of poetry on 
the world, and he will tell you "None." The poor fool does 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 297 

not know that his very trade is based on man's love of the 
beautiful, and that the love of beauty derives is sustenance 
from poetry. 

Do dealers in furniture comprehend why agents are 
going over all the South, buying, at large prices, antique 
furniture, which was practically unsalable a few years ago? 
Certainly not, further than to say it is a craze. It is, indeed, 
a craze, but that craze is the result of an ever-shifting 
search for the beautiful, fathered by the poetic sense. 

Man's love of the beautiful has its finer expression in 
intellectual abstractions. He develops that love through 
the medium of the imagination, whence poetry springs. 
Thus nurtured, he seeks for its gratification in idols, who 
personify the virtues he esteems. 

Imagination is not a feminine quality. Women write 
neither the poetry nor the music of the world. Rugged and 
rude of nature as he is, man supplies those products. 

Women admire a painting, who find no meaning in a 
poem. They are ecstatic over jewels, but do not heed the 
stars. The stars are for the masculine mind. 

However, women, too, have their idols, the same as men. 
And the jubilant thought of all is that both with men and 
women, although here and there some idol falls and gives 
us grief, the vital idea embodied there survives, and grows, 
and cannot die. 



298 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 



WE may change our customs, as we do our clothes; 
our purposes, as we do our food. But to promote 
one's self as nearly into happiness as possible is the univer- 
sal desire of the human race. Unselfishness is no obstruc- 
tion to this proposition; neither is some great loss, some in- 
ward woe that, by main force, lifts us out of our normal, 
natural selves, into better relationship with others than we 
might otherwise attain. 

Woman is lovelier in black than in any other fabric, just 
as sorrow beautifies her beyond rubies. So, too, the minor 
chords are the sweetest in music, even as "our sweetest 
songs are those that tell of saddest thought." But this is 
not from natural intention so much as from the imperfect 
life that attends us. The disposition holds clear and pure 
and strong in every sound, healthy being to be happy. And 
the first principle of that happiness is imbedded in love of 
one's own kind. 

There never lived a woman whose one great life-longing 
was not to be loved, by one man above all others. He 
may never come into her life, but the longing for him is 
there. And to visit the poor, to furnish regiments, to do 
all manner of charity and philanthropy cannot banish nor 
supersede that longing. 

Women are not here to be angels — they are here to be 
human; and to be human is to require love. Good deeds are 
admirable, and become a woman like the halo that en- 
circles the Madonna, but they are incidental naturally, and, 
when made primary, thev undertake to fill a want that over- 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 299 

tops them, though they be as high as mountains and as 
thick inlaid as stars. 

Better to be single than unhappily married- -no torment, 
I imagine, could surpass that — but no life ever drew on to 
old age that was blessed or happy in its solitude. Indififer^ 
ence may gather like moss that stops the gurgle of a spring, 
and dull existence blunt the poignancy of pain, but the 
old want abides and racks the heart with desolation, no 
matter how cleverly and creditably the ruin be hidden from 
the world. 



autumn Dap0. 

THOSE who delight in the beauty of groves and woods 
flushed with the fullness of Autumn tints may be for- 
given if they rail against the sudden blight of frost — the 
killing frost which fell last night. 

The gradual variegation on tree and plant Indian sum- 
mer is wont to give, is impossible now to any considerable 
extent. 

The frosty lingers of the fall touched not to lingering 
loveliness the leaves which present so soft, so varied vision 
in beautiful decay, but abruptly swept them of lingering 
life ere the monotonous green of summer gave way to Octo- 
ber's customary rich array. In heaps the leaves must fall 
to their winter beds to perish quite, whilst the denuded 
trees stand sere and solemn, like assembled shivering 
throngs called suddenly to forego an expected carnival. 

Nothing in Nature's visible forms is more sweetly pleas- 
urable than the sweetness of her Autumn colors. She 



300 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

would have the season perish Hke a queen, lovehest in the 
dying, as though to manifest the perfectness of her plan, 
in which the coldly critical mind assumes to see such griev- 
ous imperfection. 

Her groves are veritable books, the pages of which ex- 
pound a different philosophy from that based on human 
logic, which seeks with finite eyes to scan the infinite. 

Even to those enveloped in pessimistic thoughts, and for 
the most part established in pessimistic environments, there 
is a reconciling influence in Autumn days and airs and 
sounds and sights which takes away much of tlie bit- 
terness of despondent belief. And to those whose sensi- 
bilities are seasonable to poetic control, the pleasures of 
Autumn in the country are rich in rapture, fascinating to 
the eye and comforting to all the finer sensibilities. 

The ultimate teachings of Nature are obscure and incom- 
prehensible, but who can spend an afternoon in happy 
Autumn fields and not see that she has wrought definitely, 
purposely, even in the tinges of the tiniest stem, half plant, 
half fiower? Such flawless, perfect blending of colors in 
petals and leaves; the most diminutive comes not by acci- 
dent, but by design. 

The best development of human skill is not equal to 
match the smallest flower that blooms unseen in field or 
wood, or on the banks of some sequestered stream. 

If this plan and purpose of harmony be so apparent and 
precious in her unnoted forms of life, shall it not also prevail 
in her higher creations, even in the human, where her 
system is not infringed? 

Why this marvelous profusion of beauty, unless it be to 
cause her highest creature to seek and cherish the beau- 
tiful? 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 301 

Why the songs of birds, driven to chmes of better cheer, 
exultant in their flight, unless to declare the unison of 
changing seasons, and constant care for animated creatures, 
that their existence may not be vain? 

But, independent of teachings neglected or compre- 
hended. Nature delights at this season in her own revels; 
and right royal fetes they are when not thwarted of her 
mood. At dawn the entire east is cast in vivid purple, 
the royal color, as the stars recede like sentinels dismissed 
from an imperial residence in the restored safety of the 
day. 

The birds, all blithe, herald the swift advent of the sun 
in triumphal song, whilst splendor after splendor is dis- 
closed in the illuminated clouds enriched with hues of infi- 
nite variety. With prompt advance, ruddy of front and 
mien as gracious as a self-pleased monarch, the sun ascends 
above the entrenchment of the hills; the clouds in the fore- 
ground blush with profuse shades of light — and the new 
day is at hand. 

At sunset the secene is even more sublime. The greeting 
of the morn is changed to the benediction that brings the 
twilight. The western slope divides the seas of scarlet and 
yellow with peninsulas of projected blue and islands of 
emerald, overhung with soberer, softened radiance, like the 
countenance of immeasurable love expressing a brief adieu. 
The chill which follows the departing day is not that of 
grief or of regret, as when something precious in one's life 
is lost, but the sweet admonishment of gratitude, which im- 
presses one how bleak this world, this life, would be with- 
out Nature's constant encouragement and care. 



302 THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 

QioDern Qioralitp* 

IT IS nearly half a century ago since Nathaniel Hawthorne 
threw a firebrand, as it were, into the Puritan system 
of morality, which practically recognized two standards of 
judgment of the cardinal social sin of the sexes. 

Substantially the cavalier element of the South were 
equally amenable to the rebuke embodied in Mr. Haw- 
thorne's great novel — "The Scarlet Letter" — founded on 
this radical, social evil. 

He was so clear in his exposition, not only of the injus- 
tice inhering in the prevalent distinction between the man's 
part and the woman's in this sin, but in the demonstration 
of the harm resulting from a double standard of morals, 
that he set the world to thinking on the subject, and, in this 
country at least, he aroused the conscience as well as the 
mind to a consideration of the subject. 

That neither the mind nor the conscience of the country 
has been able to bafifle his exposures, is amply shown in 
the constantly increasing circulation of his wonderful novel. 
None would contend that the interest in the book is chiefly 
due to its unique and thrilling romance. That interest is 
due to the profoundly dramatic and moral treatment of the 
theme. 

When one finishes reading it, it is not of Hester Prynne 
and Dinnesdale that he thinks, but of the question of social 
guilt involved, which applies through them to men and 
women in general. 

The book has not been and cannot be put aside, because 
it contains the Hfe principle of a question with which society 
has still to deal. 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 303 

Strangely enough the dehneation and correction of the 
evil involved has been practically left to the stage and to 
works of fiction. It seems to be regarded as a matter not 
to be dealt with as a direct question of ethics. Indeed, the 
progress made in the remedy of it seems tacitly, by ac- 
quiescence, to concede that it is right to apply one standard 
to the man and another to the woman, but that it is charit- 
able after the woman has been condemned and compelled 
to an expiatory life, to feel and to extend a sort of inocuous 
sympathy, as though to say: "We know you were not 
sinful in heart, only the welfare of society will not allow 
us to do more than feel sorry for you." 

That's about as far as we have progressed in actual 
remedy of the evil. But even this is more than apparent on 
its face. We hate crime; we pity weakness. To pity is to 
deplore, and to deplore is to acknowledge a state of things 
which should not exist. 

That's where the question stands to-day. The world 
recognizes that woman is bearing more than her part of the 
shame and the wretchedness. 

Moral questions do not retreat, do not work backward — 
they press forward and finally compel adjustment. 

It is an immense step forward since Hawthorne's day to 
find men and women crowding the theaters to see "Ca- 
mille." Very few of these would admit that the unhappy 
child of the Camelias deserved to make her awful atone- 
ment alone; somebody should have walked the ways of 
shame with her, should have stood in the last, still hour of 
death beside her, and shared the judgment which passed 
from man to the Creator. 



304 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

Somewhere in the world there moved a man free of re- 
proach, perhaps honored and happy, on whose breast, if 
never before, there should have been placed in that last hour 
the scarlet letter which consigned the woman's life, the 
woman's love, the woman's sin to constant infamy — not 
Camille only — but he and Camille. 

The world will not yet avow so much, but at least it 
cannot disavow that it feels as much, and is secretly 
ashamed of its own proscriptions. 

The open avowal of injustice will come after awhile. Man 
is very tenacious of his own laws, especially his radical laws. 
The double standard is his, and only his. The Savior ter- 
rifically reviled that law; man himself will be compelled to 
repeal or repudiate it. 

If for no other reason than its great influence in bringing 
about the single standard of morality, the stage should have 
the earnest support of enlightened moralists. 

Much obtains on the stage which moralists should oppose. 
The way to oppose it is to place the theater, its patronage, 
in good hands, among good people. 

Its power for good or evil is increasing, because its pa- 
tronage is increasing. It is becoming more and more an 
abstract and brief chronicle of the time, a reflex of public 
taste and public morals. 

One cannot be a regular attendant at the play-house, see- 
ing both the good and the bad, year in and year out, with- 
out realizing that the stage is growing as an exponent of the 
morals of the times, and that the conspicuous feature of 
modern morality is the desire to amend the injustice toward 
women. 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 305 

Consider the profligacy that flourished and flaunted in the 
period of the Reformation in England, and was reflected in 
the drama of that time — a time when gentlemen boasted 
of being libertines, the number of their victims being a 
matter of distinction similar to that of the Indians in wear- 
ing the scalps of pale-faces. 

The stage would not dare to exalt or countenance liber- 
tinism to-day. When it is used as the basis of a modern 
play, it is so treated as to bring upon it reproach and 
retribution. 

Not to go into a discussion of modern plays, consider 
the seemingly trivial matter of the songs introduced in 
many of those plays — and songs have become of much 
greater influence on the stage than is commonly supposed. 
It isn't the chastely-worded, the correctly constructed songs 
that prove popular, but simple, even trite, inartistic songs of 
sentiment, which reach the heart and gain the favor of au- 
diences of to-day. 

The most successful song in years, no longer confined to 
the stage, but sung in cottage and mansion by those whose 
hearts and lives are pure, tells of a village youth meeting 
in a large city a girl from his neighborhood who had gone 
away from home to hide her shame and bury her sorrow 
from those she loved and brought to disgrace — all for love 
of a man, only to be betrayed, cast as rubbish to the void, 
deserted by him; the crowning glory of a woman's life de- 
spoiled utterly and made the source of misery, which only 
the grave could end. 

The youth protests that he is still her friend, and asks 
if there isn't some message she would like to send the 
wretched ones at home. 

m 



3o6 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

Bearing her shame terribly in mind, she yet says, through 
a flood of tears, from a heart as innocent of sin as when she 
was cradled on her mother's breast in those dim, distant 
days: 

"Just tell them that you saw me, and they will know the 
rest, 

Just tell them I was looking well, you know; 
Just whisper, if you get a chance, to mother, dear, and say, 

I love her as I did long, long ago." 

Who would apply two standards as between that girl and 
her betrayer? Who does not know that the standard should 
be one and the same, because the sin was one and the same? 

A change is going on in public sentiment, by which man 
must apply one moral standard to both the sexes. The 
stage reflects this change, and encourages even through the 
medium of a simple song. 



Is it well to be popular? Let those who enjoy such a 
favor say. To me, an onlooker, merely, of social move- 
ments, I should say that it is and that it is not. And if I 
had to say one, instead of both, I should say that it is not. 
In us all there is more or less vanity. Many of us 
are so very vain as to deny our vanity. It is an active and 
essential principle of nature, nevertheless, and is capable of 
indulgence absolutely without the consciousness of the pos- 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 307 

sessor. It isn't limited to the human family, but rules in all 
the animal kingdom. 

Indeed, the violet twined in a lovely woman's hair would 
add its own sweetness if it could, because of the compliment 
of having its frail life nipped in the service of beauty. 

The horse stalled by overburden will renew his energy 
under the stroke of a devoted hand. Consider how in a 
circus, beasts, reptiles once ferocious deadly, overcome by 
kindness, put by their natural propensities in order to please 
their flatterers. The elephant, the most august and awk- 
ward citizen of the jungle, actually condescends to waltz 
for the entertainment of a multitude, marking time to the 
music of man — a creature whom he would be pleased to 
smite with his terrific trunk and make deadly sport of, en- 
countered in his native wilds. 

Serpents forget their venom and twine around a woman's 
neck, pleased patrons of her beauty, because she flatters 
them into subjugation. 

Misers undo their treasures, besought by a woman's 
praise. 

So all who live are vain. There's no denying it. 

But we still have wisdom here, that we accredit this sen- 
sibility to others and deny it to ourselves. 

Not over-indulged, it is a positive excellence, a virtue 
which mitigates, obscures, defeats many a hardship, many 
a pang. 

Others change their opinions of us; we lose their esteem; 
our worst qualities take precedence in the general view. The 
world is as prone to censure as to praise. And the great 
purpose of nature to develop strength in her creatures is 
so persistent that we excuse a vice, but abhor and denounce 



3o8 THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 

weakness, or, pitying it the least, it is the pity of reproach, 
of scorn. 

But foreign feeling does not altogether dispossess us of 
good purpose so long as pride of personality has any 
power of expression. And under well-bestowed, well- 
meant flattery, we yield to our better capacities according 
to our strength. 

Now this matter of popularity — what is it? Only the 
simple quality of adaptability — the readiness to say a pleas- 
ing word to a senator or a servant, to a maid or her mis- 
tress, to an urchin or a patriarch, to the virtuous or the vile. 

And why should not that word of pleasantness be said? 
To cause another to think better of himself or herself is to 
think better of one's self. 

Once during an unparalleled procession in this city, I 
stood opposite the residence of a woman who was seated 
on the porch, and I observed that perhaps one-half of those 
in the pageant, and the women, all, bowed to her with a 
show of homage that would have done honor to a queen. 
That was popularity. Everybody liked her because she 
liked everybody. 

And I said to myself, how much better that loveliness in 
a woman than the disposition in so many of her sex to 
slariderous gossip, to the detriment of other women. 

But I wondered, also, if she were a man and enjoyed 
such general, delightful favor, if it would not be to her 
undomg. 

There is such a thing as magnetism among men; a posi- 
tive resistless quality. That's the reason why masculine 
sociability is so hazardous, so fraught with temptation. 

As certainly as men of liberal mind, disposed naturally 
or by acquisition to conviviality, get together, and the con- 



THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 309 

versation takes a brilliant turn — the service being within 
easy reach, the cheer and thrill of the wine glass strongly 
persuade the party to its delights. And, given a party of 
congenial men, weak in their proclivities and aroused to 
their best discourse, they will drink more than is proper and 
prolong the hour regardless of the clock. 

Women cannot understand this, and they should not. 
Neither in the slightest degree should they extenuate it. 
It is wrong. Nevertheless, it is a potent charm, always 
prevalent in the past, positive in the present, inevitable in 
the future. 

The popular man is exposed peculiarly to this blended 
pleasure and curse. In every gathering of this sort a 
central figure, whom all like and who has the faculty of 
bringing them all together in animated and rivalrous argu- 
ment, is a desirable quantity, and if he be not girt round 
with more than ordinary strength, he will make undue 
forfeit for his popularity. 

Rather than this, it is better to be phlegmatic, prosaic, 
unsentimental, practical; pursuing the duties of the day 
faithfully and enjoying the repose of the night properly. 

Keep the mental and moral structure in due order, even 
though it lack all the warmth and glow of beauty. It is 
so ordained for all who would lead what is called a 
successful life. 



3IO THOUGHTS : By Brutus. 



Dctofiet Dap0« 

THE unbroken range of green has gone from hill and 
field, the frailer growths are blackened and withered 
by the frost; resistance against decay is at an end, and all 
t)ie prospect fraught with the blight of autumn. 

Aptiy has the season been called "the melancholy days." 
The unobtrusive, fearful birds have found their bowers 
despoiled, and have hushed their songs, or sing in fright- 
ened plaints. The hardier of their kind must soon be on 
the wing for friendlier climes — the frailer awhile will bide 
the bitterness of early winter, then droop and die. 

But Nature beautifies decay — ^just as she lends a strange 
and sudden dignity to death. And presently from out the 
sere of blight will come a lavishness of color in leaf and 
cloud, and rosy glows dispel the chill of gray and unin- 
viting skies. 

Strange that Nature should array herself in all her love- 
liest blazonries for mourning weeds! Can it be, after all, 
that there is no cause for grief or for despair, and are 
we to believe that she attires herself so cheerfully to tell 
us all is well? 

What means the spring, that gives us back from under- 
neath the garnering leaves the green and glow and perfume 
of returning life? Whence the mysterious restoration? 
And if there is a power so mindful of the perished flowers 
as to garner each tiny seed and bring it back to life and 
beauty at the appointed season, may not Man, who cannot 
reconcile himself to decay, take heart that through an in- 
scrutable providence this same power will, in good time, 
reanimate his dust? 



THOUGHTS: By Brutus. 311 

Is it rational to conceive of a beneficent providence that 
the lowest forms of life are to be restored and the highest 
to be destroyed? In the lower forms there is no conscious- 
ness of pain; they know no sorrow and cherish no hope — 
their little life is as a day of bud and flower and fruit. 

Man is a creature of pain and labor, of hopes and dis- 
appointments, of love and sorrow. Nothing- for which he 
strives has enduring fruition, and, for the most part, fruition 
never comes. All his faculties require a larger development 
than he can accomplish here, and all the purposes of his 
existence clamor for perpetuity. He is hardly prepared 
to live before he must put it all by. What is to become 
of his character, his affections, his hopes? Is he the product 
of an evil power, that makes sport of the profoundly pa- 
thetic drama of life, and then mocks him with engrossing 
death? Surely the great source that conceived beauty 
and majesty and love was free of evil! 

Go to the woods and streams and fields. They have no 
audible answers to these questions, but it is good to muse, 
and to draw near that vast presence which holds the whole 
of life in its embrace. 



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